Latest / Pink Pill Podcast / Surviving Migration in the Age of AI with Petra Molnar

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Surviving Migration in the Age of AI with Petra Molnar · Pink Pill Podcast

• 0:02
  Mahnoor Mahar: In 2025, governments around the world have tightened borders, rewritten citizenship laws, and expanded the systems that decide who gets to belong.
• 0:12
  Mahnoor Mahar: Across Europe, North America, and the Mediterranean, migration is being framed as a crisis, and that framing is reshaping how states treat people who are simply trying to move, survive, and live.
• 0:24
  Mahnoor Mahar: Borders today are not just physical fences or checkpoints.
• 0:31
  Mahnoor Mahar: The violence of the border is now embedded in technology.
• 0:34
  Mahnoor Mahar: There are drones patrolling seas and deserts, biometric scanners and refugee camps, and algorithms deciding who gets asylum and who is detained.
• 0:42
  Mahnoor Mahar: And behind all of this is an enormous industry.
• 0:46
  Mahnoor Mahar: To understand how this world of digital borders is being built and what it means for people on the move and who benefits from it, I am joined today by Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist who has worked in migrant justice since 2008.
• 1:01
  Mahnoor Mahar: She is the associate director of the Refugee Law Lab and co-creator of the Migration and Technology Monitor.
• 1:08
  Mahnoor Mahar: Her book, The Walls of Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, documents how technology is reshaping migration and the digital border.
• 1:18
  Mahnoor Mahar: Thank you so much for being here, Petra.
• 1:23
  Mahnoor Mahar: It wouldn't be right to start this conversation about immigration, borders, and surveillance tech anywhere other than Gaza and the current genocide.
• 1:32
  Mahnoor Mahar: The way I see it, the anti-refugee and anti-migration rise across the globe is not separate.
• 1:40
  Mahnoor Mahar: Because of what we have allowed to happen in Gaza and seen live streamed, our tolerance for watching people suffer is so high that everything outside of it is small.
• 1:52
  Petra Molnar: I think that's such an important framing, Mahnur, and I'm glad that that's where we're starting the conversation today, the kind of shift in terms of what we consider acceptable or even imaginable.
• 2:03
  Petra Molnar: I mean, we're talking about a time where there are so many intersecting crises, right?
• 2:08
  Petra Molnar: Like on the back of COVID, the environmental catastrophe, the genocide in Gaza, so many other conflicts going on in Sudan, so many issues where people are really hurting.
• 2:20
  Petra Molnar: And then on top of that, we see this overlay of technology and surveillance and the kind of exacerbation of vast, vast power differentials.
• 2:30
  Petra Molnar: I think it is a really unique moment in that sense where there's like a simultaneous maybe turning away or disavowal of certain things, or just people's capacity or bandwidth being stretched totally thin in the face of these tremendous atrocities, while then also having very powerful powerful players and actors like the private sector very much benefiting from these kind of intersecting crises.
• 2:58
  Petra Molnar: That's not to say that these issues were not happening before.
• 3:00
  Petra Molnar: Of course they were, but there is definitely been this kind of ratcheting up of so much of the um difficulties that people were already experiencing before.
• 3:11
  Mahnoor Mahar: Do you think the rise in anti-immigration rhetoric, for example, earlier in the year in the UK, Keir Starmer spoke about how Britain is becoming an island of strangers, echoing what Enoch Powell said in 1968 in his Reverse of Blood speech?
• 3:28
  enoch powell: In this country, in 15 or 20 years' time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.
• 3:36
  enoch powell: I can already hear the chorus of execration.
• 3:43
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, this fear-mongering rhetoric that leaders are engaging in, do you think it manufactures consent for the digital border regime and surveillance technology?
• 3:51
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, I mean, the these kind of um this turn towards ratcheting up the anti-immigration rhetoric really is at the center of what animates the turn towards technology and surveillance and automation, while at the same time, you know, I think it's important to not look at it from an ahistorical perspective, right?
• 4:09
  Petra Molnar: Like these kind of ideas have been with us since the conception of a border during colonial times.
• 4:16
  Petra Molnar: Um, borders and migration regimes have been used for centuries to divide communities, break up uh families, um, and also you know, borders and migration has been used as a way to fearmonger around particular group groups of people.
• 4:33
  Petra Molnar: That is not new, but what is new is perhaps this kind of exponential increase of this type of rhetoric all around the world.
• 4:42
  Petra Molnar: You know, you mentioned Keir Starmer in the UK, we're seeing similar rhetoric pushed by the EU.
• 4:47
  Petra Molnar: I mean, oh my god, what's happening in the United States, right?
• 4:50
  Petra Molnar: I mean, there's so much anti-migration rhetoric now.
• 4:54
  Petra Molnar: And when we try and understand what's happening on the kind of border tech and surveillance side of things, it's really important to look at these kind of logics that underpin it, right?
• 5:04
  Petra Molnar: Because if a person on the move or a mobile community is seen as a threat or a fraud or somebody just to make more intelligible and knowable and trackable, and the state says this is a community that is the problem, in scare quotes, and this is a community that we have to ward against.
• 5:23
  Petra Molnar: Well, then it starts making sense why the private sector will would go, Well, you have this problem, we have a solution to it.
• 5:29
  Petra Molnar: And that solution is an algorithm or a robot or surveillance tower.
• 5:34
  Petra Molnar: Because again, migration is seen as something problematic, something to control, something uh to prevent from reaching the shores of the EU or the UK or the US.
• 5:44
  Petra Molnar: Um, and we are seeing this kind of conflation more and more all around the world.
• 5:48
  Mahnoor Mahar: As you say, we're seeing it increasingly across the globe.
• 5:52
  Mahnoor Mahar: And in your book and your research, you write about the transnational nature of this digital border regime, how spaces like borders or colonies are destined grounds where people are essentially guinea pigs for developing this technology.
• 6:05
  Mahnoor Mahar: And then, of course, it's brought back to cities like New York or London, where people may have the belief that they're unaffected by what is happening so far away from them.
• 6:14
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, could you speak more on the transnational nature of this regime and industry?
• 6:19
  Petra Molnar: Sure.so I'm someone who's been trying to understand this kind of interplay of technology and migration since about 2017.
• 6:26
  Petra Molnar: I always like to say, like, I'm not a tech person though, by training.
• 6:29
  Petra Molnar: I'm a lawyer who's trained in immigration and refugee law and an anthropologist, but not a tech person.
• 6:34
  Petra Molnar: And back then I was like, why should we care about tech?
• 6:37
  Petra Molnar: Well, what is it's why is it so important to try and understand like how artificial intelligence is being used at the border or algorithms or biometrics.
• 6:45
  Petra Molnar: And ultimately, it's about power and power differentials, right?
• 6:50
  Petra Molnar: And how these kind of tools and technologies are tested out in particular spaces.
• 6:54
  Petra Molnar: Um, we first found out that for the, for example, the Canadian government was testing out algorithms in our immigration system way back in 2017, 2018.
• 7:03
  Petra Molnar: And then I kind of took it upon myself to try and weave together this story from a more global perspective.
• 7:09
  Petra Molnar: And context after context, jurisdiction after jurisdiction, it's the same pattern.
• 7:15
  Petra Molnar: Borders, refugee camps, spaces of movement are the places where technology is first tested out.
• 7:22
  Petra Molnar: Um, when we talk about border tech too, we're talking about this massive class of technologies, right?
• 7:27
  Petra Molnar: We're talking about drones and surveillance that maybe listeners are familiar with, but it's also things that are kind of like hidden under the hood, the kind of algorithmic discrimination that powers so much of immigration decision making, um, biometrics that are collected by force in refugee camps, and also like really outlandish sci-fi type projects like Robodogs or AI towers that are now at the US-Mexico border.
• 7:50
  Petra Molnar: But it basically creates this kind of phenopticon or this testing ground of technologies because borders are also spaces that are very hard to critique.
• 8:00
  Petra Molnar: They're opaque, they're discretionary.
• 8:02
  Petra Molnar: Oftentimes they've now increasingly also been designated as military zones.
• 8:06
  Petra Molnar: That's something that we've been seeing in Greece, but also at the US-Mexico border.
• 8:10
  Petra Molnar: And so it becomes even more difficult for journalists or for researchers uh to gain access into those spaces, and that's where the kind of human rights abuses uh take hold.
• 8:19
  Petra Molnar: So, again, it's not an accident that borders have become this laboratory of extremely high-risk experimentation with technology.
• 8:27
  Mahnoor Mahar: Thank you so much for explaining that.
• 8:29
  Mahnoor Mahar: In your book, which I haven't finished yet, but I'm reading, and it's so good and important, everyone should read it.
• 8:35
  Mahnoor Mahar: And you write so beautifully.
• 8:37
  Mahnoor Mahar: In the first chapter about the US-Mexico border, you write about how people crossing the Sonoran desert can't even look at the sky and pray to God because they will be spotted by drones with facial recognition.
• 8:49
  Mahnoor Mahar: In the same chapter, you also speak about how migration in the form of people crossing borders is now criminalized, which makes using such technology on people somehow okay.
• 9:00
  Mahnoor Mahar: And policies towards legal migration are also becoming increasingly hostile.
• 9:04
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, is this something that has always been the case?
• 9:07
  Mahnoor Mahar: Because migration does seem like something very natural.
• 9:10
  Mahnoor Mahar: People would go to spaces that may be safer for them or where they could build a better life or earn more money to support their families.
• 9:18
  Mahnoor Mahar: But when did the criminalization aspect of it come in and how has it changed the way in which we look at migration?
• 9:25
  Petra Molnar: That's a really important question because there is this kind of inherent tension at the center of it.
• 9:30
  Petra Molnar: For some people in some communities, immigration and movement has been inherent in how they experience the world.
• 9:38
  Petra Molnar: Whereas for other communities, borders have always historically been violent, racist, discretionary spaces.
• 9:46
  Petra Molnar: Um, you know, even like we could take it as far back as again to the kind of invention of the concept of the border, because even the very idea of bordering can be very violent, right?
• 9:58
  Petra Molnar: Like it bifurcates entire communities, for example, between US and Mexico.
• 10:02
  Petra Molnar: You know, you have indigenous communities that have been literally cut in half by the border, physically, but also kind of symbolically.
• 10:08
  Petra Molnar: But when you talk about the criminalization of migration, I mean that is a trend that scholars have been noting um kind of on the rise again for a while.
• 10:17
  Petra Molnar: You know, it makes me think of, for example, the the word crimmigration that we sometimes use, right?
• 10:22
  Petra Molnar: Like the criminalization of migration.
• 10:24
  Petra Molnar: Um, there's a really interesting book um a few years ago now, written by Cesar Garcia Hernandez that talks about this kind of um concept.
• 10:32
  Petra Molnar: But that's precisely what's happening.
• 10:33
  Petra Molnar: Criminal law and its norms are being applied to human movement, even though, you know, there's an entire legal process in place, right?
• 10:44
  Petra Molnar: If we want to put our lawyer hats on, um, there's international refugee law that gives every single person on the planet the ability to claim asylum should they need it, if their life is in danger.
• 10:55
  Petra Molnar: This is, you know, we can find these norms and laws in international documents like the Refugee Convention and also in domestic law.
• 11:02
  Petra Molnar: Um, there's an understanding, right, that should you need to avail yourself of protection, you have that right.
• 11:08
  Petra Molnar: And yet it's become almost a crime to seek asylum, especially in certain jurisdictions like the UK or the United States.
• 11:17
  Petra Molnar: Uh, and again, this is not accidental because it maps onto those logics that we were talking about earlier, the logics to exclude, to criminalize, to look at suspicion, uh, like look with suspicion at communities um that are really risking their lives to seek safety.
• 11:34
  Mahnoor Mahar: In the context of all this, borders, like you mentioned, become a space where human rights are not upheld.
• 11:41
  Mahnoor Mahar: In our preliminary call, we spoke a bit about Agamben and the state of exception.
• 11:45
  Mahnoor Mahar: And we don't need to get too theoretical about it, but if you could speak a bit more about why suddenly rules do not apply in spaces like that, or why it's easy for human rights violations to take place at borders.
• 11:59
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, careful.
• 11:59
  Petra Molnar: You don't want me starting to talk about Agamben or Achille Mbembe based Necropolitics.
• 12:04
  Petra Molnar: But, you know, jokes aside, like these theories are really important to help us understand why borders are seen as these spaces and experienced as spaces of tremendous violence.
• 12:14
  Petra Molnar: And one of the things that these theories do, and then also, you know, practically speaking, this is something I saw at virtually every border that I was, you know, lucky enough to work at, um, borders are opaque and they're very discretionary spaces, right?
• 12:28
  Petra Molnar: I mean, we can even expand it out and look at an airport as a little mini manifestation of a border.
• 12:34
  Petra Molnar: I mean, how many people have had very difficult experiences at the hands of a border official or an immigration official or, you know, somebody who's scanning your bag just because they're having a bad day, or because your skin is dark, or because you're wearing a kufiya, it is all very discretionary.
• 12:51
  Petra Molnar: That's not to say that there aren't laws and regulations in place, um, especially the human rights framework, is something that applies very much at the border.
• 13:00
  Petra Molnar: But what we are seeing, and again and again, is that because borders are also animated not only just by discretionary decision making, but also again by the politics, the politic of politics of exclusion, politics of anti-migration, um, they become kind of these uh spaces where so much violence can occur.
• 13:21
  Petra Molnar: You know, perhaps listeners are familiar with the practice of push backs.
• 13:26
  Petra Molnar: This is something that has gained um somewhat of media uh recognition in recent years, but what I'm talking about is the practice that has been documented in Greece, for example, which is one of the, you know, the edge countries of the EU, and so it does a lot of the kind of border policing work, not only just for Greece, but also for the broader European Union.
• 13:44
  Petra Molnar: Um, there are documented cases where people uh seeking asylum were violently pushed back from European territory, uh, essentially prevented from being able to claim asylum on European grounds, um, which is a direct contravention of international law.
• 14:01
  Petra Molnar: You're not allowed to remove somebody from your territory once they've already entered.
• 14:05
  Petra Molnar: Um, and yet this happens um nearly, it used to happen on a nearly daily basis.
• 14:10
  Petra Molnar: Um, how is that possible?
• 14:12
  Petra Molnar: Well, again, because borders are very discretionary.
• 14:14
  Petra Molnar: They're difficult to police, they're difficult to um gain access to when you're a human rights monitor or a journalist.
• 14:21
  Petra Molnar: And again, we're dealing with a space that's become very, very political.
• 14:25
  Mahnoor Mahar: Thank you.
• 14:26
  Mahnoor Mahar: That's very insightful.
• 14:27
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, my next question is that with all of this technology and these policies, who benefits?
• 14:34
  Mahnoor Mahar: You mentioned the private sector that steps in to act on these fears, criminalization, militarization.
• 14:40
  Mahnoor Mahar: But who are the key players and who really benefits from all of this?
• 14:44
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, you know, I think this is the thing that surprised me the most in my work.
• 14:48
  Petra Molnar: The massive, massive influence of the private sector in what's very rightly been called the border industrial complex by colleagues like Todd Miller, he's an amazing journalist in Arizona who runs the Border Chronicle, would highly recommend for listeners to take a look at their work.
• 15:04
  Petra Molnar: But Todd's been talking about the border industrial complex for years.
• 15:08
  Petra Molnar: It's essentially a multi-billion dollar industry where companies, small, medium, and large, are making massive amounts of profit off of people's suffering.
• 15:17
  Petra Molnar: Some of the companies maybe even are familiar to people.
• 15:20
  Petra Molnar: We're talking about Palantir, Clearview AI, in the European context, TALIS, Airbus, Nvidia.
• 15:28
  Petra Molnar: But there's also so many smaller and medium-sized players, too, but everybody wants a slice of the pie.
• 15:33
  Petra Molnar: Um and I think we're really seeing this kind of ratcheting up of this control of these really powerful private sector players, A, because a lot of the governments need partners in the private sector space.
• 15:47
  Petra Molnar: This is what we sometimes call public-private partnerships.
• 15:50
  Petra Molnar: Um, public entities like states want to use this technology, but oftentimes they don't have enough in-house talent or the ability to kind of create this tech themselves.
• 16:00
  Petra Molnar: So then they end up partnering with companies and private sector actors to kind of create this technology.
• 16:06
  Petra Molnar: But again, it goes back to some of these kind of foundational logics that we were talking about earlier.
• 16:11
  Petra Molnar: If migration is presented as a problem, the private sector then goes, Yes, we have a solution for you, and we're gonna make massive amounts of money for this.
• 16:19
  Petra Molnar: We saw a direct example of this as soon as uh the second Trump administration started.
• 16:25
  Petra Molnar: The day after President Trump was re-elected, stocks in private security firms soared.
• 16:32
  Petra Molnar: And since then, I mean, we literally saw, right, private sector actors having an open uh invitation into the Oval Office.
• 16:38
  Petra Molnar: Same things are happening in Brussels and in London and in other spaces of political influence.
• 16:44
  Petra Molnar: And so what this very difficult time that we're in planetarily, I think, shows us though, is like just how much influence the private sector has.
• 16:54
  Petra Molnar: And I would also be remiss uh not to mention the role of Israel and Israeli companies in all of this as well.
• 17:02
  Petra Molnar: Um, I know we touched a bit on Gaza, but um Israel is a major player in the kind of creation of technology and the normalization of surveillance as well.
• 17:12
  Petra Molnar: So much of the technology that's tested out on Palestinians, either in the Occupied West Bank or in Gaza, um, is then exported out for border enforcement.
• 17:22
  Petra Molnar: This is something that I saw directly.
• 17:24
  Petra Molnar: We were doing work in the Occupied West Bank about seven months before the start of the Gaza genocide.
• 17:29
  Petra Molnar: But also for listeners who are interested in this, I would highly recommend the book by Anthony Lewinstein called The Palestine Laboratory, which charts just how much influence Israel has in this border industrial complex and the kind of normalization of surveillance um globally.
• 17:46
  Mahnoor Mahar: As you mentioned in the book, the US-Mexico border and the towers are also Israeli built, are they not?
• 17:52
  Petra Molnar: That's right, yeah. So one of the clearest examples, literally, because you can drive up to them if you know where they are, um, are these AI towers.
• 18:00
  Petra Molnar: They are an Israeli company that has created essentially a stationary AI tower that creates this kind of surveillance dragnet across the Sonora Desert, which is the desert that's at the US-Mexico border.
• 18:11
  Petra Molnar: And um, yeah, like I said, if you know where to go, you can see them, you can physically be there near them, and they are a clear manifestation of this kind of Israeli influence in the border control space.
• 18:23
  Petra Molnar: But there's also Israeli drones, for example, that patrol the Mediterranean, um, and also surveillance technology that's been found in European Union member states as well.
• 18:33
  Mahnoor Mahar: Amidst everything that's happening right now, it seems like technology is getting more advanced at an alarming rate and more hostile towards immigrants, people in Palestine, Gaza being the clearest example.
• 18:44
  Mahnoor Mahar: How does one not fall into despair when we see technology being used for war?
• 18:49
  Mahnoor Mahar: How do we stay hopeful?
• 18:51
  Mahnoor Mahar: How do we resist?
• 18:52
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, that's such an important question.
• 18:54
  Petra Molnar: And you know, I would be lying if I didn't say that I've myself felt really, really deep despair.
• 19:00
  Petra Molnar: I mean, especially a couple years ago, you know, when I was kind of like doing a lot of the front-line research for the book and spending time in spaces, and I was living in Greece at the time, that was really one of the flash-points of this kind of border tech industry and lots of border violence.
• 19:14
  Petra Molnar: I mean, it really, it really gets to you.
• 19:17
  Petra Molnar: And then, of course, with the genocide and all the ongoing conflicts, like it can feel really hopeless.
• 19:22
  Petra Molnar: But I think what's important is to not lose sight of the fact that there are so many people who are actively resisting what's happening and also building new coalitions and ways of working together and kind of trying to find a way through.
• 19:39
  Petra Molnar: And you know, for me, if I'm totally honest, in every single situation of deep despair and witnessing these horrific conditions, there was always, always people who made a choice to help, to come together, to do whatever they could in their own small way, um, at every single border, in every single point of difficulty.
• 19:58
  Petra Molnar: And so to me, that's actually really powerful.
• 20:02
  Petra Molnar: Um, because if we only look at the side of despair, that only tells a part of the story, right?
• 20:07
  Petra Molnar: Like there's so much resistance and contestation and creativity that uh powers the kind of way that people are trying to stand up to the current moment.
• 20:17
  Petra Molnar: Um, you know, and maybe I can bring in a direct example.
• 20:22
  Petra Molnar: Maybe I'm a bit biased as well, because uh we run one of the projects called the Migration Technology Monitor, where we work directly with colleagues on the move and colleagues under occupation who are resisting technology actively every day.
• 20:34
  Petra Molnar: We incubate projects directly from the community.
• 20:37
  Petra Molnar: Um, we're actually having our first meeting uh together in person uh next month, even though we've been running this project for three years.
• 20:45
  Petra Molnar: But it's amazing because, you know, every day I get to interact with colleagues who are living through migration situations and the Israeli occupation, but also actively resisting it.
• 20:58
  Petra Molnar: And we get to learn uh and kind of co-create this together, and that's been really, really uh tremendous.
• 21:03
  Mahnoor Mahar: That sounds brilliant.
• 21:04
  Mahnoor Mahar: I hope the meeting goes really well and you guys are able to continue doing the amazing work you're doing.
• 21:09
  Mahnoor Mahar: Um, I think about migration a lot, especially since I've moved to the UK and live on a skilled worker visa, and it's getting more and more hostile.
• 21:18
  Mahnoor Mahar: And I keep thinking if living here is worth it, but I digress.
• 21:22
  Mahnoor Mahar: My point is one thing that I'm super grateful for is my friends and community from other parts of the global south of Code and Code, like Lebanon, Palestine, Somalia, Rwanda, big cities in the West act as spaces where we can meet each other and build transnational solidarities and do some good work through that.
• 21:42
  Mahnoor Mahar: This may sound weird, but while reading your book, I felt hopeful learning about the different contexts and countries where technology, where this technology is being used.
• 21:53
  Mahnoor Mahar: It's clear that the problem concerns all of us.
• 21:56
  Mahnoor Mahar: So we all need to fight it together.
• 21:58
  Mahnoor Mahar: And there's a type of solace.
• 21:59
  Mahnoor Mahar: I feel annoying that because then it feels like we're not alone and having to resist.
• 22:04
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, because otherwise we then kind of end up being trapped in little silos and these like almost like self-referential spaces where the stress and the difficulty of doing this kind of work can become all encompassing.
• 22:18
  Petra Molnar: But when in fact we kind of look more broadly and see similar struggles, you know, in the labor rights movement, for example, um, or the kind of anti-surveillance and transnational uh crime kind of area, you know, like I think there's so many similarities that um, you know, the border justice space can can kind of look to, for example.
• 22:38
  Petra Molnar: And it definitely I think makes people feel less alone.
• 22:42
  Petra Molnar: Um, and it's also, you know, that's where kind of creativity and creative resistance and contestation actually comes into it, right?
• 22:48
  Petra Molnar: Like looking beyond your frame of reference, but trying to identify similarities and differences in approaches across different communities and lived experience and and ways that people are kind of showing up for themselves and for one another in these difficult times.
• 23:03
  Petra Molnar: Um, I think if anything, it also shows like it's just how committed people are to trying to build a different world.
• 23:10
  Petra Molnar: Um, and even though, again, I think so many people are very fatigued, there are again intersecting crises that people are dealing with, but at the end of the day, um so many more people are kind of choosing to turn towards one another in these difficult times.
• 23:25
  Petra Molnar: Um, and I'm hopeful, you know, that maybe this will be the kind of reckoning that uh maybe will actually herald a very different uh existence for many communities out there.
• 23:36
  Petra Molnar: See, but I'm an eternal optimist uh at heart, so maybe that's that's where that comes from.
• 23:41
  Mahnoor Mahar: Um I understand how challenging and difficult your work is.
• 23:44
  Mahnoor Mahar: I don't mean to say that it's not, but maybe it's easier to stay hopeful when you're actually doing something about the current situation, you know?
• 23:53
  Mahnoor Mahar: Because you are actually an immigration lawyer and you help people every day.
• 23:58
  Petra Molnar: That's very kind.
• 23:59
  Mahnoor Mahar: No, but you do.
• 24:00
  Mahnoor Mahar: I'm so impressed by everything you do and the way you write.
• 24:03
  Mahnoor Mahar: And I wish I studied something or did something that would be more useful in this time.
• 24:07
  Mahnoor Mahar: But I understand you used to be a musician and then you moved into immigration and law.
• 24:12
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, what called you to this?
• 24:14
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, that's a that's a complicated one.
• 24:16
  Petra Molnar: I mean, I always say I'm a very reluctant lawyer, you know, because I see the law as uh like a toolkit that you can use to um try and push uh for change.
• 24:27
  Petra Molnar: But I think the law also is so problematic and builds on these kind of hegemonic ideas, right?
• 24:32
  Petra Molnar: Of like the individual rights holder being somehow more important than like a community um that that needs to be thought about.
• 24:38
  Petra Molnar: But all that being said, you are right.
• 24:41
  Petra Molnar: I used to be a musician, um, but I always felt like I was missing a little bit of that kind of connection to maybe social justice or or doing something that is trying to kind of understand power and and how it operates in the world.
• 24:56
  Petra Molnar: Um, I had a bit of a winding road to to law, um, and I did my graduate work in anthropology before.
• 25:03
  Petra Molnar: Um, but I I think it was ultimately that it was kind of coming up against these systemic barriers um in the migrant justice space and just being like, well, why are things not changing?
• 25:15
  Petra Molnar: And it all kind of pointed to the legal system.
• 25:18
  Petra Molnar: And then I thought, well, maybe that there's a way for for me to try and understand this, and that's how I kind of meandered my way in there.
• 25:24
  Petra Molnar: But um, yeah, let me tell you, uh, when I was doing litigation in in Canada, I used to litigate in uh in immigration court and also family law cases.
• 25:34
  Petra Molnar: That was that was really difficult doing doing individual cases like that because I mean they are some of the kind of sharpest manifestations of how the system really is stacked against people.
• 25:44
  Petra Molnar: Um, so I then eventually moved more towards this kind of academic policy type of work, um, where you find me now.
• 25:50
  Petra Molnar: But I do think, you know, I would never want to like uh dissuade somebody from doing a law degree, but I think it's important to look at it as a toolkit and also to critique it too, because it's definitely not the be all and end all.
• 26:03
  Petra Molnar: And you know, I will challenge what you said about um wishing that you did something more useful, quote unquote.
• 26:08
  Petra Molnar: But there's so many different ways of being useful.
• 26:11
  Petra Molnar: Um, I think especially in these times, we need really creative ways of kind of coming together and thinking through these really complex problems.
• 26:19
  Petra Molnar: And lawyers are not going to be the only ones who are gonna fix this, that's for Sure.
• 26:22
  Petra Molnar: If anything, lawyers are gonna create more problems.
• 26:26
  Mahnoor Mahar: I guess we are watching the limitations of international law in real time with South Africa's case against Israel at the ICJ on genocide charges, and yet Israel continues to bomb, starve, and blockade Gaza with near complete impunity.
• 26:41
  Mahnoor Mahar: Um, and I think that connects to what we see at borders.
• 26:45
  Mahnoor Mahar: The law isn't failing accidentally, it's being selectively withheld.
• 26:50
  Mahnoor Mahar: It protects some lives and not others, and that tells us something about the limitations of the law itself and who it was built to serve.
• 26:58
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:59
  Petra Molnar: And if anything, it's an opportunity to really look those limitations in the face and and the kind of you know established international world order, so to speak.
• 27:07
  Petra Molnar: And it is really disappointing to see kind of a turning away from that, but then also the the real inefficacy of, for example, the United Nations or the International Criminal Court.
• 27:19
  Petra Molnar: I mean, um, these days more than ever, I think we're really needing to critique what these institutions are doing and how they could be doing things differently.
• 27:28
  Mahnoor Mahar: You mentioned that when you first encountered this technology, you didn't understand the algorithms or the systems behind it.
• 27:35
  Mahnoor Mahar: And I think most of us don't.
• 27:37
  Mahnoor Mahar: But these tools are shaping people's everyday lives, especially those already pushed to the margins.
• 27:43
  Mahnoor Mahar: So, how do we learn to understand this?
• 27:45
  Mahnoor Mahar: And is there a way to talk about Border Tech simply without losing the seriousness of what it's doing?
• 27:52
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:52
  Petra Molnar: I mean, that's probably my kind of biggest beef with the like tech space and the digital rights space.
• 27:58
  Petra Molnar: It it makes it seem so complicated.
• 28:00
  Petra Molnar: And honestly, I was really overwhelmed when we first kind of, you know, how I mentioned we came across this kind of um, these pilot projects and things that the Canadian government was doing back in 2017, 2018.
• 28:11
  Petra Molnar: When I was trying to analyze it, you know, as the kind of immigration and refugee lawyer that I was back then, I was like, I don't understand any of this.
• 28:17
  Petra Molnar: I don't know what an algorithm is, I don't really know anything about AI.
• 28:20
  Petra Molnar: Like, also, why should I care if the people I'm working with are getting deported tomorrow?
• 28:24
  Petra Molnar: I mean, this is just like some fringe issue that we don't need to think about.
• 28:27
  Petra Molnar: But as I spent more and more time with it and kind of seen the broader manifestations of it, you know.
• 28:32
  Petra Molnar: I mean, I know I've said this a few times, but really like it's about technology, but it's actually about power.
• 28:37
  Petra Molnar: It's about how these tools are applied and misapplied against particular communities.
• 28:42
  Petra Molnar: And actually, it's it's not as complicated as like the tech sector would even have us to believe.
• 28:47
  Petra Molnar: It's ultimately about uh very problematic decision making, it's about um accountability and transparency and not being able to critique uh when things go wrong.
• 28:58
  Petra Molnar: It's about systemic racism and discrimination, um, problems that already exist in the immigration space, but they're exacerbated by the tech.
• 29:06
  Petra Molnar: So I think what I would say is um for people who are interested or concerned about technology and and kind of its human rights impacts, like don't be scared to look into it and learn about it, because ultimately, again, it is something that affects all of us now, and it is the kind of extension of the issues that were already present there.
• 29:30
  Petra Molnar: Um, and it's not it's not as complicated uh as I think sometimes the private sector would want us to believe, because if something is complicated and inscrutable, then less people were critique it.
• 29:40
  Petra Molnar: But in fact, you know, it's an opportunity for all of us to to actually learn about this kind of new set of human rights violations and and what we can do about it.
• 29:51
  Mahnoor Mahar: Something I keep thinking about is the major attack in Lebanon, where communication devices were turned into weapons, and we're seeing similar things elsewhere, like drones used to lure people out of buildings, snipers coordinated through AI targeting.
• 30:06
  Mahnoor Mahar: The technology is getting more and more violent and more precise.
• 30:10
  Mahnoor Mahar: It feels nothing short of evil.
• 30:13
  Mahnoor Mahar: So who is actually developing these systems and who benefits from this level of militarized surveillance?
• 30:19
  Petra Molnar: Yeah, so much of it is about this kind of um, you know, like a dehumanization that's at the center of it, right?
• 30:28
  Petra Molnar: Whether you you look at a drone or an algorithm that's making life or death decisions about you.
• 30:34
  Petra Molnar: I mean, all of these things are about using tools that um create a barrier between the person making the decision, right?
• 30:42
  Petra Molnar: Whether to press a button and kill somebody, or uh code an algorithm to deport somebody and the person that's actually being affected.
• 30:50
  Petra Molnar: Um there that is really like such an inherent central part of this entire um system of violations.
• 30:57
  Petra Molnar: But also it's about, again, the kind of powerful actors that are at the center of all of this: the private sector uh that's making massive money, um, the state and and politicians who are making decisions based on politics of fear and exclusion and systemic racism.
• 31:16
  Petra Molnar: Um, you know, it's it's also sometimes about academics who are wanting to build careers on um, you know, being able to develop innovative new technology in the so-called AI arms race.
• 31:26
  Petra Molnar: Like all of these things kind of come together to create um these systems of violence that are impacting real people.
• 31:34
  Mahnoor Mahar: We've spoken um quite a bit about what this technology is capable of doing in terms of harm or how violent it can be.
• 31:42
  Mahnoor Mahar: But the same technology could hypothetically be used to help people.
• 31:46
  Mahnoor Mahar: So is there anyone within your field, or are there people working with AI or tech to help migrants, to help refugees, um, or to help in general in such situations?
• 31:58
  Petra Molnar: Okay, so obviously I'm like a tech skeptic, you know, and and rightly so I think, because often we see these like grand pronouncements, right?
• 32:06
  Petra Molnar: Like including, for example, by the UN and other entities, right, which also need to be critiqued.
• 32:11
  Petra Molnar: But that's a separate conversation.
• 32:12
  Petra Molnar: But you know, we see things like AI for good, tech for good, all these things.
• 32:16
  Petra Molnar: But first of all, like good for who, and how is it that we've kind of normalized all of this technology as a starting point, anyways?
• 32:24
  Petra Molnar: Like maybe instead of you know, um, investing massive amounts of money into like another hackathon, give people access to a lawyer or psychosocial support or food or education, you know, like let's start there, right?
• 32:38
  Petra Molnar: However, you're right.
• 32:40
  Petra Molnar: I mean, technology in and of itself can also be used in really innovative and interesting ways.
• 32:46
  Petra Molnar: I mean, whether you look at, you know, the use of drones, for example, in like a humanitarian emergency to deliver medical supplies or food.
• 32:54
  Petra Molnar: Um, the tricky thing is, right, like similar technology can then be used to co-opt uh that tech for surveillance, right?
• 33:00
  Petra Molnar: So we always have to think of it from this kind of dual uh use perspective, unfortunately, in uh in the immigration and kind of humanitarian space.
• 33:08
  Petra Molnar: But what I'm more kind of like interested in or really curious about is like how communities themselves are developing technology.
• 33:17
  Petra Molnar: And that's where we see really cool examples, for example, at the Migration Technology Monitor Project.
• 33:22
  Petra Molnar: You know, we have people who are data analysts, but also refugees living in a camp who are developing psychosocial support technology to create essentially an online archive for their mobile community.
• 33:34
  Petra Molnar: We have refugees who are creating chatbots for and by their own communities, former migrant workers who are challenging surveillance.
• 33:43
  Petra Molnar: Um, so I think so much of the very like quote-unquote useful tech that actually is necessary needs to be developed by and for the affected communities themselves.
• 33:52
  Petra Molnar: Because otherwise, again, it's just these kind of grand pronouncements of tech for good or AI for good, but it actually has to be grounded in community learning and this kind of case-by-case approach that um, you know, it doesn't assume that technology is somehow this kind of um, you know, solution to all sorts of problems.
• 34:12
  Petra Molnar: It can be a tool, um, but it's a tool that has to be wielded really wisely.
• 34:17
  Mahnoor Mahar: Yeah, um, that makes a lot of sense.
• 34:19
  Mahnoor Mahar: I work in development research at the moment, mainly because it's the thing that sponsors my visa, but we won't get into my identity crisis right now.
• 34:27
  Mahnoor Mahar: Um, but I think about development research a lot.
• 34:30
  Mahnoor Mahar: I keep telling my colleagues that so much of it is basically the civilizing mission repackaged.
• 34:35
  Mahnoor Mahar: It's framed as doing good, but the power imbalance remains the same.
• 34:39
  Mahnoor Mahar: The West gets to save us after causing problems.
• 34:42
  Mahnoor Mahar: And the same projects often get used to monitor and control people.
• 34:45
  Mahnoor Mahar: So I get what you're saying.
• 34:47
  Mahnoor Mahar: Um, even when the tech is presented as helpful, if the power structures stay the same, it can still reinforce surveillance and violence.
• 34:56
  Petra Molnar: Absolutely.
• 34:57
  Petra Molnar: Absolutely.
• 34:58
  Petra Molnar: I mean, I think that's why it's so important to critique again, like not just the technology in and of itself, but what is it doing on the ground and how is it used and or misused.
• 35:08
  Petra Molnar: Um, because even kind of innocuous, seemingly innocuous things like using predictive analytics to help with humanitarian responses, right?
• 35:18
  Petra Molnar: Like using big data sets to determine, well, if a conflict breaks out here, people are likely to move here, and therefore we're gonna wait there for, you know, to be able to assist them very quickly.
• 35:27
  Petra Molnar: That all sounds great.
• 35:28
  Petra Molnar: But what if a tool like that ends up in the hands of Frontex, for example, or a border surveillance agency, and same predictive analytics are then used for border interdictions or the illegal push back operations, like we were talking about.
• 35:41
  Petra Molnar: So it's always very important to critique um the kind of use case study on the ground and how it's impacting real people and communities.
• 35:50
  Mahnoor Mahar: Thank you so much, Petra, for your time for this conversation and for the way you do this work.
• 35:56
  Mahnoor Mahar: I've already learned so much from you.
• 35:58
  Mahnoor Mahar: And your book is so powerful, not just in the way that it says, but in how you write the care, the ethics, the refusal to treat people's stories as something to extract that really comes through.
• 36:10
  Mahnoor Mahar: And I'm still reading it, but I'm really looking forward to finishing it.
• 36:14
  Mahnoor Mahar: And I just wanted to say thank you as well for being so encouraging and generous throughout this process, especially since this is my first podcast.
• 36:22
  Mahnoor Mahar: It means a lot.
• 36:23
  Mahnoor Mahar: So thank you for being here.
• 36:25
  Petra Molnar: Thank you so much.
• 36:25
  Petra Molnar: Thanks for having me and for the for the great conversation.