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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the implications of AI in border practices in Finland. Based on interviews with migrants and migration officials it shows how AI is contextually bound and shaped by the national policies - furthering slow violence by categorizing migrants to deserving and undeserving.

Paper long abstract

This paper critically explores the implications of automation of border practices in the context of Global North.

The paper is based on qualitative ethnographic research among migration management and asylum seekers in Finland. The paper argues that while the implementation of AI in border regime is driven by aspirations and imageries of rationalization and efficiency, in practice it creates a complicated temporal inequality between deserving and undeserving migrants. Automation of borders aims at efficiency, however, time is not the same for all. Instead of streamlined efficiency, migrants experience prolonged waiting, unpredictable delays, and shifting timelines that are difficult to contest or even comprehend. Rather than simply accelerating bureaucratic processes, automation restructures time itself — imposing new rhythms, pauses, and deferrals that disproportionately burden migrants.

The study further shows how the use of AI is contextually bound and shaped by the cultural values and national policies - further categorizing migrants to deserving and undeserving. This is manifested through the concept of slow violence (Nixon 2013) that illustrates the way AI in migration management operates as accumulative and hidden rather than spectacular power of inequality. The research makes visible that automation does not erase bureaucratic violence but reconfigures it—rendering uncertainty, delay, and opacity ordinary features of everyday life under migration management.