RT Article
T1 Surveillance evangelism: Private technology companies and the digital futures of crimmigration control
JF Theoretical criminology
VO 29
IS 3
SP 365
OP 386
A1 Singler, Samuel
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1932756930
AB This article contributes to criminological research on surveillance and border technologies. By analysing private security companies’ visions of future technologies as surveillance imaginaries, I argue that these companies can be conceptualized as ‘surveillance evangelists’. Rather than marketing existing technologies, surveillance evangelists aim to convince state agencies and the wider public about the desirability and plausibility of particular – contingent and contestable – technological futures. Private security companies’ visions of digital borders across the African continent contribute to the ideological normalization of crimmigration control, by promoting digital futures in which technologies of criminal justice and border control are fully interoperable. The notion of evangelism is useful for highlighting the speculative, ideological nature of these imaginaries as well as the postcolonial hierarchies that underpin the construction of technical expertise relating to digital crimmigration control.
K1 Technology
K1 Surveillance
K1 Privatization
K1 Imaginary
K1 Borders
DO 10.1177/13624806251336758