The scholarship on digital borders theorises how new technologies have changed the concept of physical borders. With the introduction of interoperable databases for screening and profiling people, borders are no longer just territorial boundaries between countries but now also include digital classification and identification systems.

This seminar focuses on the UK Home Office’s recent implementation of a digital system to verify the legal status of migrants in the country. Under these new changes, migrants in the UK must provide a ‘share code’ to access their immigration status online, which is essential for their right to work, housing, and benefits.

In our paper, we investigate the ways in which databases have been used to document, categorise, and verify individuals’ legal status in the country. Theoretically, we explore how digital immigration status alters the process by which state authorities establish an individual’s identification, shifting from a given and stable status to one that must be continually requested from and verified by the state with the support of a new set of border intermediaries (employers, landlords, and welfare services).

Our empirical research conducted in collaboration with a pro-migrant organisation combines both a survey and in-depth interviews with affected migrants across the UK. It demonstrates that the biases and technical issues of the digital system disproportionately impact migrants with different economic, legal, and social capital in the country.

The findings of this research contribute to the growing body of work on the digitalisation of immigration systems – particularly on digital identity – in growing hostile environments against migrants.

About the speakers

Marie Godin is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leicester in the School of Geography, Geology, and the Environment.

Additionally, she serves as a research associate at both the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) and the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford. Her primary research focuses on exploring the multifaceted impact of digital technologies on displaced populations within various protracted displacement settings.

Marie is actively engaged in academic networks, serving as a board member of the Standing Committee on Migrant Transnationalism (MITRA) within IMISCOE, facilitating academic exchange on diaspora studies and transnational migration scholarship.

She has just co-edited a special issue for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (forthcoming 2025) entitled “Digital Technologies and Migration: Behind, Beyond and Around the Black Box”. She is also the associate editor for the Journal of Migration Studies, a publication of Oxford University Press (OUP).

Derya Özkul is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick. She also serves as the Co-director of the Social Theory Centre at the University of Warwick’s Department of Sociology and as a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Derya is a Co-Investigator of the Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (AFAR) project, where she is leading the mapping of new technologies and qualitative research into perceptions among those subjected to them.

Derya is the author of various journal articles and book chapters related to the politics of migration and displacement, including a comprehensive research report titled Automating Immigration and Asylum.