Technologies, infrastructures and migrations: material citizenship politics

This article aims to explore the multiple uses and consequences of different technologies and infrastructures in the context of migrations and how such uses and consequences inhabit and transform migrants’ rights and subjectivities. It reviews relevant literature at the intersection of citizenship, critical migration studies and science and technology studies (STS), focusing in particular on the current debates underway within critical citizenship studies that examine how technologies and infrastructures shape the ability to acts of citizenship. By mobilizing insights from STS, we focus on how these political subjectivities are shaped by certain sociomaterial and epistemic practices. By introducing the notion of material citizenship politics, the article outlines a way to differentiate three different constitutive forms between technologies, infrastructures and citizenship in migrations. Technologies and infrastructures can (1) constrain acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes; (2) constitute contestation and participation over citizenship; or (3) enable and shape alternative acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes. As it provides a theoretical background to the special issue, the article also serves as the introduction to the issue.This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Consolidation grant, agreement No. [648608]), within the project `EXCHANGE -Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy', led by Helena Machado and hosted at the Institute for Social Sciences of at the University of Minho, Portugal. Furthermore, this work is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT/MEC) through national funds within the scope of the CES-SOC/UID/50012/2020 Strategic Project