The Permission to Move: Borders and the Politics of Migration

The Permission to Move: Borders and the Politics of Migration comes to Northrop's Best Buy Theater on Thursday, December 3, as part of the University of Minnesota's (In)Justice Series. It's a dialogue about how data is used to police migration and shape public perceptions of people on the move.

The session is one piece of the 2026-2027 (In)Justice Series on Data & Power, presented by the University of Minnesota's Institute for Advanced Study. The whole series looks at data through the lens of diaspora, asking how people on the move experience the data that defines them. It follows four questions—Who gets to belong? Who gets to move—and who gets tracked? Who gets mapped? and Who gets remembered?—and brings together interdisciplinary scholars, artists, practitioners, and community members to explore how institutions use data to classify people, regulate movement, and control whose histories are preserved or erased. The series is supported by the MnDRIVE Human in the Data Initiative.

The Permission to Move fits into the second of those questions: Who gets to move—and who gets tracked? The conversation focuses on the data used to police borders and the way that data influences how the public thinks about migration. It's a look at the digital side of border control—the tracking, the classification, and the paperwork that determines who is allowed to cross and who isn't.

The event is free and open to the public, and it's held in a hybrid format: you can be there in person at Northrop's Best Buy Theater on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus or join online via Zoom. It's part of a larger series that runs throughout the year, so if this one hits home, there's more to follow.