Algorithmic Borders and Global Law: A Qualitative Study of Digital Identity, Migration, and Legal Recognition
Keywords:
Algorithmic borders, digital identity, migration law, legal recognition, biometric governance, qualitative research, global lawAbstract
This study aimed to explore how digital identity systems, biometric infrastructures, and algorithmic border practices reshape migrants’ experiences of legal recognition, rights access, and belonging in contemporary global law. This qualitative study was conducted in Tehran using semi-structured interviews with 24 participants selected through purposive and snowball sampling. Participants included migrants with cross-border legal experiences, legal practitioners, civil society workers, and digital governance specialists familiar with migration, identification, and administrative recognition. Data collection continued until theoretical saturation was achieved. Interviews were audio-recorded with informed consent, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed through thematic analysis. NVivo software was used for coding, retrieval, category development, and comparison across participant groups. Trustworthiness was enhanced through member checking, peer debriefing, reflexive memo-writing, and preservation of an audit trail. Five main categories were identified: digital identity as a gateway to legal personhood; algorithmic opacity and procedural vulnerability; biometric bordering and embodied exposure; fragmented recognition across legal systems; and human mediation as a corrective to technological exclusion. Participants described digital identity as both enabling and exclusionary: it could accelerate access to services, but it could also intensify dependency on databases, biometric verification, and opaque administrative judgments. Migrants emphasized that legal recognition increasingly depended not only on documents, but also on whether digital systems could “read” and validate them. The findings suggest that algorithmic border systems are transforming legal recognition from a documentary and institutional process into a data-mediated condition. While digital identity may improve administrative efficiency and service delivery, it also raises concerns regarding privacy, accountability, discrimination, and access to remedy. Rights-based governance, human oversight, transparency, and inclusive design are essential to ensure that digital borders do not reproduce or deepen existing inequalities in migration law.
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