12.04.2026 –, Seminarraum 2 Sprache: English
"Border Profiteers" exposes how migration management has become a global industry feeding on crisis. As wars and climate collapse displace millions, tech firms and arms makers turn suffering into profit. This session traces how state power and capital fuse into a regime of exclusion, turning displacement into a resource for racial capitalism — and how to organize resistance!
Displace. Detain. Deport. For Big Tech, this is not a human tragedy—it is a vertically integrated supply chain.
This session, grounded in the Border Profiteers research, exposes how the "technocratic-authoritarian" restructuring of society is pioneered at the border. We map the corporate ecosystem where Big Tech, arms manufacturers, and PMSCs converge to turn migration into profit at every stage.
Displacement: The same conglomerates fueling climate collapse and supplying weaponry for global conflicts are selling the "solutions" to manage the resulting refugees. We trace how tech firms secure lucrative Frontex contracts for aerial surveillance and drone warfare to intercept those fleeing the very crises these companies helped create.
Detention: The "smart border" is built on biometric data, algorithmic profiling, and cloud infrastructure. We analyze how the logic of ICE contracts in the US—where companies like Palantir and Amazon power deportation raids—is replicated in Europe’s digital fortress. Tech giants provide the backbone for the databases that categorize "bare life," while PMSCs use these tools to manage detention centers as logistics hubs.
Deportation: From the travel agencies booking charter flights to the security firms escorting prisoners, expulsion is big business.
Join us to uncover the "cables" connecting Silicon Valley data centers to the razor wire of Fortress Europe—and to strategize how to cut them.
Lucas is an activist from Berlin whose work revolves around technological violence, corruption, whistleblowers, propaganda and facilitating collaboration across movements. He co-initiated the open source organizing platform activist.org.
Marley is a Berlin-based activist, facilitator and ecologist. He has been working on the intersections of social and ecological movements, with particular focus on migrant justice, anti-colonial organising and the reclamation of urban spaces for civil society. Recently, he has been very active with the anti-militarist movement in Berlin and beyond.
He is the chairman of Bridges over Borders e.V., a community-based association fighting for marginalized refugees.