Mobility control in the digital age

The everyday securing of human, financial and data mobilities

Organised by Anthony Amicelle (UdeM), Anne-Marie D'Aoust (UQAM), David Grondin (UdeM) et Mireille Paquet (Concordia), this workshop took place at the Université de Montréal on November 1^st & 2^nd, 2018. More than 30 experts and academics on themes related to mobility, technology, finance, human in a digital era.

Mobility raises security concerns, and technology is seen as a key solution for the everyday securing of mobilities in the digital age. “The concept of mobilities encompasses both the large-scale movements of people, capital and information across the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space and the travel of material things within everyday life. […] Fears of illicit mobilities and their attendant security risks increasingly determine logics of governance and liability protection within both the public and private sectors” (Hannam et al., 2006).

In this respect, technological innovations in digital computing and big data analytics play a central role to manage the security/mobility nexus, i.e. the “dynamic tension between freedom of mobility and the provision of security”. Indeed, mobility controls are now increasingly mediated by new technologies to face the difficult dilemma of how to facilitate legal mobilities of people, money and data while enforcing the laws against illegal mobilities. Notwithstanding this significance, little is known about the set of problems posed by the choice and the use of new technologies that allow mobility controls to be made operational for law-enforcement and counterterrorism purposes.

In this context, the proposed project aim to develop and support research partnerships among scholars and practitioners from different fields to build new knowledge and approaches to the interdisciplinary study of mobility controls.

En collaboration avec le Centre de recherche en immigrationm etchnicité et citoyenneté (CRIEC) et le Centre pour l'évaluation des politiques d'immigration

Programme (anglais seulement)