Double session with 1) Daria Hetmanova, PhD researcher at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, Canada; and 2) Genius Amaraizu, Ph.D. scholar in Rhetoric, Media, and Publics (Communication Studies) with the Humanity and Technoscience Lab in the School of Communication at Northwestern University, USA.

Online | 3:00-5:00 PM (CET) | Registration form will be made available in due course.

1) Infrastructures of "Filtration" in Russian-Occupied Territories of Ukraine
In March 2022, witness accounts revealed the existence of "filtration camps" established in Russian-occupied territories, where residents of the Ukrainian southeastern city of Mariupol and nearby areas were subjected to the extraction of their biometric and user data prior to being forcibly transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation. Since then, the Russian-established filtration infrastructure has been consistently repurposed by the Russian state, gradually formalizing into the seemingly "everyday" practices of border control for Ukrainian citizens reaching Russian-occupied areas, introducing filtration procedures from "filtration camps" into its existing border control practices.

Taking up its main theoretical orientation through Huub Dijstelbloem's (2021) idea of "borders as moving entities," this paper aims to (i) extend the understanding of filtration infrastructure as not bound to a specific place—the "filtration camp"—but to track its many manifestations in space and time to the present moment; and (ii) map the ways in which filtration infrastructure has changed Russian border control surveillance practices, and vice versa. To do this, the paper draws on interviews with volunteers involved in assisting forcibly transferred Ukrainian citizens to leave Russia, as well as interviews with forcibly transferred Ukrainian citizens themselves. Simultaneously, this paper builds on and attends to what Dijstelbloem (2021) refers to as infrastructural investigations—the ways in which filtration infrastructure was mediated to citizen-viewers through journalistic and human rights investigations, and the political implications of understanding filtration infrastructure as materialized only in the space of the "filtration camp."

2) E-Border in Africa
This work examines how people imagine, practice, and experience electronic border technologies in West Africa. This is situated within a rhetorical and historical context of global migration governance, security, and border externalization, as well as a contemporary shift toward smart borders and trade. I explore the framing of digital borders and surveillance infrastructures expanding across Africa as tools of security and migration management. Focusing on Seme, Hillacondji, and Aflao, three international land borders between Nigeria and Ghana, I trace how sociotechnical and political imaginaries legitimize border technologies and entangle media infrastructures with mobility. I use ethnography, critical discourse analysis, and archival research to document digital borders as paradoxical sites of imperial circulation and state legitimacy, revealing the new ways they perpetuate historical patterns of control, disruption, and continuity in shaping African migration experiences.