Algorithmically Constructed Shibboleths
The Technological Mediation of Automated Dialect Recognition in Asylum Procedures
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3948167 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jasper Van Der Kist (0000-0002-5455-9972, University of Antwerp, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-36 |
| Publication date | 2025-07-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2025.2530417 |
| OpenAlex | W4413060165 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 133 |
There is a trend in the field of asylum adjudication to develop and implement new technological solutions for the identification of asylum seekers. The Dialect Identification Assistant System (DIAS) developed by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) stands out. What are the implications of automated dialect recognition technology for administrative-legal procedures of refugee status determination? This paper employs a post-phenomenological approach centred on the analytical concept of ‘technological mediation’. It argues that the technological mediation of automated dialect recognition reinforces the tendency to focus on what asylum seekers do rather than what they say. Moreover, automated dialect recognition system constitutes asylum seekers as docile objects of government rather than recalcitrant subjects who can account for themselves. The article concludes that there is a need to further inquire what this technological mediation implies for refugee protection, as legal subjectivities afforded by human language are displaced by algorithmically constituted shibboleths
Business · Computer security · Economic geography · Geography · Linguistics · Mediation · Operations management · Political science · Process management · Computer Science · Engineering · Global Security and Public Health · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
Anthropology and Expertise in the Asylum Courts
The Constitution of Algorithms
Truth Machine
Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law
The illegal body
The Birth of the Clinic
Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice
Of Recalcitrant Subjects
Cutting Code. Software and Sociality
The politics of deceptive borders
The Arabic Language
Biometric State
Asylum Matters
Privacy, Due Process and the Computational Turn
Autonomy of Migration
Material Politics
Political Asylum Deceptions
Secrecy and Methods in Security Research
Inside Asylum Bureaucracy
Inventive Methods
The role of linguists and native speakers in language analysis for the determination of speaker origin
Identification and Citizenship in Africa
Reassembling the Social
Negotiating research in the shadow of migration control
Seeing Like a State
Who Is a Refugee? Uncertainty and Discretion in Asylum Decisions
States, the Law and Access to Refugee Protection
Asylum Determination in Europe
Epidermal politics
Collecting, assembling, ordering
The Fragile Force of Law
Smart Ellis Island? Tracing techniques of automating border control
The Sight of Migration
The Principle of Hospitality
Audializing migrant bodies
Asylum, Identity Management and Biometric Control
Border control technologies
Securing Identities
Listening in the Pakal controversy
The Global Visa Regime and the Political Technologies of the International Self
Browsing with Alexa
Refugees and the violence of welfare bureaucracies in Northern Europe
Let the right one in? On European migration authorities’ resistance to research
Drawing Lines, Enacting Migration
Infrastructuring European migration and border control
Lines in the Sand? Towards an Agenda for Critical Border Studies
The Aadhaar scheme
Distant, opaque and seamful
Paperwork performances
Algorithmic Reason
The Birth of Biopolitics
Composting and computing
Methodological Nationalism, the Social Sciences, and the Study of Migration
The deep border
Counter-mapping the techno-hype in migration research
Methodological nationalism in Linguistics
Algorithms and their others
Risking it all at the Biometric Border
Moral Exclusion, Dehumanisation, and Continued Resistance to Return
Geopolitics of Border Securitization
States of Suspicion
The Critical Subject and the Subject of Critique in International Law and Technology
Knowledge and legitimacy in asylum decision-making
A material politics of citizenship
Defined by the Flood
Torture Survivors in Asylum - Ignoring the Obvious
Border Violence and Migrant Subjectivities
Claiming citizenship rights through the body multiple
Technologies, infrastructures and migrations
Biometric citizenship
After Legal Consciousness
Enacting migration through data practices
A disobedient gaze
Recuperation through Crisis Talk
Beautiful Murmurs
Shibboleth
Self-Sovereignty for Refugees? The Contested Horizons of Digital Identity
Bio-Normative Geopolitics
Digitalising Asylum Procedures
Trained to Disbelieve
Autonomy of Migration and the Radical Imagination
Fixing State Vision
The 'Datafication' of Borders in Global Context
Request Denied
Data Matters
Extract, Datafy and Disrupt
Controlling the Schengen Information System (SIS II)
Making workable knowledge for asylum decisions
Epistemic domination by data extraction
Reinventing the politics of knowledge production in migration studies
The Redistribution of Methods
Performing the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Through Refugee ID Cards
The Body We Care for
Seeing Like a State
Science at the Bar
The Truth from the Body
The Precarious Truth of Asylum
Playing with Limits
The hallmark of a doctor
Confessional Subjects and Conducts of Non-Truth
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |