Turbulences of speeding up data circulation. Frontex and its crooked temporalities of ‘real-time’ border control

Abstract

In the last decade, various information systems have been created to process data in ‘near to real-time’ across agencies to ‘improve situational awareness and to increase reaction capability’ at the external borders of the European Union. While the policing of mobilities is increasingly discussed in terms of instantaneity, speed, and real-timeness, little has been said about the temporalities of data mobility. This paper focuses on the socio-technical architectures that are generative of data mobilities and analyses the temporality of data circulation as the outcome of a contingent formation of various actors, sites, and materials. Based on an indepth analysis of the Frontex information system Joint Operation Reporting Application (JORA), it works out several sources of turbulence that turn data mobility into a ‘crooked’ process of patching multiple temporalities and paces together. It will show how the implementation of JORA faces data frictions, issues of data quality, the synchronization of multiple orderings, and the clash of temporalities of border control practices on the ground. Thus, the infrastructuring of data circulation has effects on interorganizational forms of collaboration and knowledge production as well as on border work in the field of European migration and border control.