Noel Sharkey – Keeping them out and keeping us in: the robot border


Noel Sharkey – artificial intelligence, Sheffield University, UK

This talk will examine developments in future robotics technology that could be applied to the protection of borders. The use of unmanned aircraft is already being used to identify border incursions and track ‘offenders’. And there are plans for the use of ground robots to intercept those crossing borders illegally. But this is just the beginning. The next generation of military robots will find their own targets and attack them without human supervision. Currently states are reluctant to give up such developments despite international protest. If they continue, it will only be a matter of time before autonomous robots enter service in the civilian world to help keep out ‘illegal’ immigrants. But in any discussion of the new technologies we must consider their potential misuse to seal us in.

See the conference slides

See the full program of the antiAtlas conference, Aix-en-Provence 2013

Cédric Parizot – AntiAtlas of borders: an art-science experimentation


Cédric Parizot, coordinator of the antiAtlas project, anthropologist, IMéRA, Institut de Recherche et d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (IREMAM – AMU/CNRS), Aix en Provence

At the beginning of the 21st century, the functions of State borders have changed. Borders do not just contain but also overflow spaces, districts and jurisdictions. Borders are losing their linear aspects and are becoming more mobile and more diffuse in order to adapt to globalisation. Actors managing border control have also substantially multiplied. In addition to states, new stakeholders such as agencies, corporations, and NGOs have emerged as actors of border management. The ways in which people’s mobility is controlled are more and more diversified and differentiated. People have to pass through multiple networks and identification devices. All these mutations have to be analyzed in detail, using a wide range of modes of expression and critical tools.

See the full program of the Aix-en-Provence conference, 2013

Andrea Rea – Controlling the undesirable at the border-network


Andrea Rea, Université Libre de Bruxelles-GERME, Belgium

This paper aims to present the main contemporary approaches of the concept of border. The second part of the paper is dedicated to an alternative approach of the processes of bordering focusing more on the relationship between bordering and mobility rather than bordering and territory as often encountered in the literature. The border is defined as border-network, a network of space-time units (airport, seaport, public space for instance) where the human (bureaucrats at the consulates, border guards, liaison officers, travellers, etc.) and the non-human (databases, laws, procedures) interact with the aim to produce practices of state sovereignty. A special attention will be paid to the relation between Europe and the countries south of the Mediterranean in a third part. Based on the concept of border-network, it is possible to analyse the European mobility policy with regards to the countries south of the Mediterranean, by paying particular attention to the security apparatus accelerating the mobility of legitimate travellers, on the one hand, and filtering and blocking undesirable people, persons suspected of circumventing immigration laws on the other. Every single person who has to do with mobility is placed under surveillance but some are under control. Last part of the paper will be dedicated to the outline we can produce with the use of border-network concept for the analysis of the control at the airport.

See the slideshare of the conference

See the full program of the antiAtlas conference, Aix-en-Provence 2013

Gabriel Popescu – Technological Determinism and the shaping of Mobile Borders


Gabriel Popescu – IméRA, AMU, Indiana University South Bend, USA

The modern political-territorial organization of the world has been built on a geographical imagination that sees space in absolute terms, as a rigid object that can be broken into quantifiable pieces. In political practice, this has lead to the division of the globe in mutually exclusive territorial units based on linear borders. Recently, we are witnessing a changing geographical imagination to incorporate a polyvalent perspective that acknowledges the relational nature of space and that is more in tune with a notion of space defined by mobility in the form of connections and nodes rather than by territorial proximity and distance decay. Accordingly, we are witnessing the emergence of complementary forms of state borders that depart from the norms of territorial linearity by becoming embedded into flows that can travel and be monitored continuously across space. The shaping of these mobile borders is heavily influenced by digital technologies that are assumed to have predictive powers and are generally conceptualized in terms of unfaltering efficiency and as panacea for securitizing transnational mobility. The problem with such logic behind the incorporation of technology into border making is that it assumes social life can be rendered digitally knowable and thus (mis)constructs border subjects as material objects detached from their social and political contexts. It is essential to clearly understand the limits and the benefits of these border technologies for society in order to assure border governance remains representative of the public interests instead of stifling them.

See an interview of Gabriel Popescu

See the full program of the antiAtlas conference, Aix-en-Provence 2013

Interview Noël Sharkey


Noel Sharkey, artificial intelligence, Sheffield University, UK

Traduction : Cecile Cottenet, LERMA (AMU). Sous titres : Myriam Boyer. Sources : Delair-Tech – The DT-18 system, Victoria Police consider Unmanned drones, CNN.com news Drones silently patrol U.S.borders – Predator B UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), RAFAEL’s Protector USV, Israel G-Nius UGV – Avantguard UGCV, Guardium LS UGV & Guardium UGV