Sinfree Makoni, Professor of Applied Linguistics

José Cossa, Associate Professor of Education

This interdisciplinary colloquium examines how artificial intelligence (AI), biometric surveillance, and data governance systems are reshaping migration control, racialized labor regimes, and global inequities. It brings together faculty and graduate students across Education, African Studies, Labor and Employment Relations (LER), Information Sciences and Technology (IST), and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) to engage these transformations collaboratively.

The colloquium engages in the justice-centered AI framework advanced by the Artificial Intelligence for Africa (AI4Afrika), an interdisciplinary collaborative co-founded by Jose Cossa, which is grounded in uBuntu(philosophy), Cosmo-uBuntu (theory), data sovereignty, and digital equity. This framework challenges dominant models of technological governance shaped by Global North control over data and platforms, and instead advances an approach rooted in relational ethics, collective responsibility, and epistemic plurality. The colloquium will build on ongoing collaborations with BAJI that have resulted in reports such the Report for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, AI and racial discrimination in U.S. border enforcement: Impacts on Black migrants and migrants of color” and “Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) in border management and immigration enforcement as well as the discriminatory impacts of FRT on Black migrants and other migrants of color.”

By placing the work of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) in dialogue with AI4Afrika, the colloquium situates racialized migration enforcement within broader systems of political, economic, and technological power. This creates a shared intellectual space connecting migration studies, labor studies, technology ethics, African and diaspora studies, and lifelong learning and adult education.