AGOPOL | Algorithmic Governance and Cultures of Policing (Research Project) (algorithmic-governance.com)

ALGORITHMIC GOVERNANCE AND CULTURES OF POLICING

Comparative Perspectives from Norway, India, Brazil, Russia, and South Africa (AGOPOL)

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Project Leader: Christin Thea Wathne

Project Co-Leader: Tereza Østbø Kuldova

Project number: 313626

Financed by: The Research Council of Norway

Project duration: 01.04.2021 – 31.03.2024

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Project Owner: Work Research Institute, OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

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Collaborating Partners: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Universidade Federal Fluminense, University of Bergen, University of Oslo, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mykolas Romeris University, Universität Heidelberg, Universiteit Utrecht, College of International and Public Relations Prague, OsloMet/NOVA
Police departments across the globe are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to support decision-making in preventing crime and disorder. The use of digital technologies and the growing role of private security, tech, and consultancy companies, are reshaping policing and the ways in which we ensure social order and security, enforce law, and prevent and investigate crime. However, this ongoing radical transformation of cultures of policing is little understood. To change that, AGOPOL brings together a team of 15 established scholars and researchers from cultural and area studies, anthropology, criminology, sociology, history, literature, and law. The project is based on qualitative and ethnographic research on policing in Norway, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Drawing on these cases we will analyze the global cultural transformation of policing as an effect of the intertwined processes of datafication, securitization, and commodification of security. Our analysis will shed light on the diverse consequences of algorithmic governance for society, police forces, and those policed: from the transformation of knowledge cultures and organizations, to algorithmic injustices and their impact on legitimacy and societal trust. We will develop a comparative cross-cultural analysis of policing as a global digitized project. This will produce knowledge on the ways in which advances in artificial intelligence shape policing in different cultural, political, legal and economic contexts.

AGOPOL | Algorithmic Governance and Cultures of Policing (Research Project) (algorithmic-governance.com)

Summary
The following research questions were central to this study:What is known about the criminal exploitation of minors in recent literature with regard to: a) definitions, profiles of perpetrators and victims, b) its nature and extent, c) the impact of (worldwide) social developments and d) the professional approach and responses? How do frontline professionals in the Netherlands deal with the (potential) criminal exploitation of minors?
 

Uitbuiting van minderjarigen in de criminaliteit in Nederland (wodc.nl)

Summary
The following research questions were central to this study:What is known about the criminal exploitation of minors in recent literature with regard to: a) definitions, profiles of perpetrators and victims, b) its nature and extent, c) the impact of (worldwide) social developments and d) the professional approach and responses? How do frontline professionals in the Netherlands deal with the (potential) criminal exploitation of minors?
 

As an interdisciplinary, multi/sited analysis of refugee surveillance, this research addresses geopolitical incentives in the EU and how surveillance subjects as forced migrants from conflict countries use virtual coping strategies to prevent legal expulsion.

The central research question is: How the interplay between digitized bureaucracies of migration control and the coping strategies of refugees from Islamic states shapes the dynamics of online mobility control?

This study aims to provide empirical data on the mechanisms of surveillance strategies that promote efficiency and objectivity and how service dependent migrants adapt their coping strategies according to the constantly changing risk profiles of screening instruments as the tools of social sorting.

Virtual control measures are not only reflecting the values and categories of the host society, but also how individual parameters are translated into risk categories. Unlike studies defining transnational mobility in terms of migration categories, this research is embedded in critical security theories to reveal the dynamics and constantly shifting nature of population flows and explore how stigmatized refugees adapt to rapidly changing circumstances by inventive virtual data sharing methods in the bureaucratic labyrinth of host societies. This project challenges the underlying assumptions behind this efficiency oriented governance technologies and by selected empirical data it provides a critical analysis on the limitations of surveillance and control practices and its implications on institutional distrust. 

The main goal of the pre-conceptualised research process is to follow, and research forced migrants from conflict countries by means of a mobile ethnographic process and to document the formation and operation of their interaction in their social networks online and offline, as well as how they develop coping strategies to hide from migration authorities. In the second phase, I completed fieldwork in three European countries (Hungary The UK and Germany) and collect case studies in 2 transit countries (Turkey and Greece). In all countries practical arrangements are in place so it is realistic to assume regular and flexible travel and stays for extended periods of time.

Research population and setting

Due to the sensitivity of this topic, sampling of participants is planned with the ethical consideration of confidentiality regarding the chance of traceability. The participants are selected into four main groups, based on their profession, residence and social media use. During the first research phase information will be collected from professionals, academics and activists working with refugees, and sampling frames will be created for the selected countries. The criteria used for the selection of localities will be developed on the basis of information collected during the background research. Using all available information from existing studies on refugee trajectories such as primary sampling units composed of municipalities, and police data, fieldwork sited were identified. Importantly, in most of the sending localities NGOs or activists are needed to assist as interpreters or gatekeepers.