Immigration Article of the Day: Automating Racialization in International Law by Priya S. Gupta

Abstract

From the continuation of colonial power structures in global economic development institutions, to immigration policies that favor applicants from white-majority European countries, to the use of counter-terrorism law to target primarily Muslim people, international law and its domestic analogues reflect and further inscribe racial distinctions and hierarchies. Racialization in international law occurs in the more visible areas of public decision-making but also in mundane, administrative practices. This essay argues that digital technologies are at the heart of automating processes of racialization in international law. Digital technological instruments effectively divide the global population, decision by decision, in adherence to the logics of racial hierarchy: they distribute social and material rights and privileges through financial, welfare, and immigration decisions while simultaneously deepening and entrenching state surveillance, policing, and violence.

International law enacts a double opacity which shields multiple automations of racialization from scrutiny and accountability: first, in its blindness to the systemic and mutually-reinforcing nature of racial disparity and relatedly, the use of proxies for race such as geography, facial features, or wealth; second, in its promulgation and protection of digital technology as a purportedly neutral arbiter of myriad public and private decisions, hiding bias in technical complexity, corporate secrecy, and intellectual property protection, and across jurisdictional lines.