With Spyridoula Spyridon, STS researcher and Programme Manager based in Athens.

Online | 3:30-5:00 PM (CET) | registration form will be available in due course.

This article examines how feminized artificial intelligence is mobilized in migration governance to perform care while legitimizing control. Focusing on the public deployment of Sophia the Robot by the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum in 2024, the study analyzes how a humanoid, gendered AI artifact is used to frame border governance as humane, efficient, and technologically progressive. Although Sophia would have no operational role in asylum procedures or border management, she was presented as an ambassador of good practices, capable of symbolizing protection, foresight, and humanitarian responsibility. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, feminist technoscience, and critical migration governance, the article treats Sophia as a symbolic artifact rather than a functional system. Through discourse analysis of official communications and public appearances, it demonstrates how care operates as a political rationality that softens and obscures coercive infrastructures. The article argues that feminized AI functions as a technology of effacement, redistributing accountability and depoliticizing border control through affect, empathy, and symbolic automation.