Filho2025EuropeanBorder

#noteType/litnote

Bibliographic info

Imbrosio Filho, C. (2025). Artificial Intelligence in European Border Policing: Legal Challenges, Migration Governance, and Security Sector Reform. Rocznik Integracji Europejskiej, (19), 133–156. https://doi.org/10.14746/rie.2025.19.8

Commentary

The core point of this paper is that compliance with legal requirements at an individual level and harm at a collective level do not necessarily overlap at all. The system may comply with the GDPR requirements towards all individuals whose data it processes and yet change the life opportunities of an entire population through racial profiling. What is most valuable about Filho's paper is his idea to define "fairness" not as an attribute of the decision but of the social structure within which the decision is made; therefore, procedural safeguards alone cannot eliminate structural bias (p. 141). This is how the paper extends its scope far beyond the specific issue under discussion, and what gives it its value. His analysis of algorithmic bias, however, simply repeats the existing knowledge in the area.

These limitations are internal to his argument. While he criticizes the ethical-AI framework that includes AI4People for being "declaratory," that is, without enforceable governance, the solutions he proposes (human rights impact assessment, an independent oversight authority, and Security Sector Reform alignment) are just as much aspirations in governance whose enforceability he fails to establish. The criticism he makes about others can be made about his own conclusion, almost word by word. There is another contradiction in his two key tools: if he is most afraid of group-level harm, then having human-in-the-loop review the decisions case by case (p. 145) will not help him detect the pattern, as each decision can look reasonable on its own while the overall pattern is discriminatory. The radical normative proposal made in the conclusion about "decolonizing" border technologies is one more step that the argument in the body of the paper, based on proceduralist rule of law, does not earn.

Excerpts & Key Quotes

Diffusion as Design, Not Accident

"such systems tend to reinforce a 'logic of automation,' where legal responsibility becomes diffused across algorithms, agencies, and private contractors."

Comment:

The obvious reading is that no one is clearly responsible because these systems are complicated. Filho's language allows a tougher one: splitting a decision across code, agencies, and private contractors is exactly what lets it happen without anyone having to answer for the result. When responsibility is spread across enough hands, it lands on no one. That raises a question worth asking: is this blurred responsibility an accidental flaw in automated border control, or the reason governments choose it in the first place?

Decolonizing borders}

"The goal is not just responsible AI, but accountable and decolonized border technologies that prioritize human dignity over efficiency metrics."

Comment:

The term "decolonized" shows up only once, at the end of the final paragraph, making an assertion that the rest of the paper never made. Everything leading up to it makes the case for the rule of law: transparency, accountability, remedy. Dismantling the colonizing power dynamics that underlie the border regime would be much more radical, and the analysis fails to do any of that.

Blurring Boundaries

"The migration routes under EU scrutiny are not merely physical corridors but are increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures that profile individuals long before physical encounters at the border."

Comment:

Border was once a space – fence, checkpoint, guard who looks into your passport. The crucial point here for Filho is that the decision is made long ago, in the system of data that scores you as dangerous or secure before you come to the checkpoint at all. By the time you get there, the decision may well be taken, and you're just implementing it. Yet since it's taken before and out of sight, you don't have any chance to see it, question it, change it – precisely the one point when you might plead your case in person. It's a great achievement of Filho to demonstrate how border becomes upstream – the other thing left unsaid is that border becomes untouchable.

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