Ville-Samuli Haverinen

I am a postdoctoral researcher in critical border studies at the Karelian Research Institute at the University of Eastern Finland. My work is funded through Profi 9 funding awarded to the university by the Research Council of Finland. I investigate how digital technologies, including biometric databases, automated risk assessment and interconnected information systems, reshape the governance of migration and human mobility. Focusing on Finland within the wider European context, I examine how borders operate beyond physical checkpoints through data collection, profiling and anticipatory categorisation.

My research brings together critical border studies, digital sociology, and migration and integration research to explore how these systems shape access to mobility, rights and societal membership. Building on my earlier work on integration discourse and the “gaze of integration”, I develop the concept of the “digital gaze of integration”. This concept connects the categorisation of people before they cross borders with the expectations they encounter within welfare state institutions. I also investigate how migrants navigate, negotiate and contest these practices in everyday life.

I combine critical discourse analysis of policy and legislative materials with the examination of technical documentation and qualitative interviews with migrants, border practitioners, digital rights advocates and integration professionals. My aim is to understand how digital infrastructures reproduce or challenge inequalities and what they mean for accountability, rights and inclusion in European migration governance.