The Expanding Use of Technology to Manage Migration

Seeking to manage growing flows of migrants, the United States and European Union have dramatically expanded their engagement with migration origin and transit countries. This increasingly includes supporting the deployment of sophisticated technology to understand, monitor, and influence the movement of people across borders, expanding the spheres of interest to include the movement of people long before they reach U.S. and European borders.

This report from the CSIS Human Rights Initiative and CSIS Project on Fragility and Mobility examines two case studies of migration—one from Central America toward the United States and one from West and North Africa toward Europe—to map the use and export of migration management technologies and the associated human rights risks. Authors Marti Flacks, Erol Yayboke, Lauren Burke, and Anastasia Strouboulis provide recommendations for origin, transit, and destination governments on how to incorporate human rights considerations into their decisionmaking on the use of technology to manage migration.

This report is supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.