Digital internal bordering: surveillance, data-sharing, and the fate of sanctuary cities

Abstract

Sanctuary cities worldwide claim to support precaritised migrants in response to exclusionary national policies. This paper is the first of its kind to analyse how digital technologies hinder the efficacy of sanctuary policies, potentially rendering them obsolete. Drawing on comparative evidence from the UK and Canada, it explores how digitally-driven responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by different government levels (local, regional, national) have impacted migrants’ rights. Findings reveal that increasing interoperability among population databases has crucially enhanced immigration authorities’ capacity to access sensitive data collected by local service providers, facilitating the detection, detention, and deportation of precaritised migrants. These practices of hostile data-sharing weaken pre-existing sanctuary protections that rely on limited cooperation between local and national officials. However, some local actors have deployed fresh counter-strategies, notably building non-interoperable data management infrastructures to ensure safer access to basic healthcare services. While prior research has examined digital transformations in immigration enforcement and welfare systems separately, this paper bridges these debates to reveal how digitisation tightens border controls within everyday urban life and what avenues of resistance remain available to migrant rights advocates.