Estimating the Future of Migration

Abstract This article explores the links between race, climate change, and the militarization of border control in the United States and the European Union, focusing on the growing number of attempts to estimate the future of migration. It argues that these estimates, particularly those focused on the number of “climate refugees,” are not only undertaken for security or humanitarian purposes but also to justify the militarization of borders. In light of artificial intelligence being heralded by many states and corporations as the solution to more efficient border control, the article seeks to highlight how the introduction of machine learning into estimates on future migration risks further obscuring the processes of racialization inherent to borders. By examining the racialized power dynamics of the climate change-migration-technology nexus, the article challenges the positing of estimates on future migration as potential facts. Instead, it posits them as manifestations of the Western desire to regulate the global movement of populations, leading to the entrenchment of racialized territorial divisions as situated within longer histories of colonialism. To conclude, the article will explore how the militarization of borders in response to climate change seeks to deny Western accountability for environmental destruction.