2026 Conference
From Departure to Belonging: Advanced digital technologies between empowerment, control and exclusion in migrant journeys
About the conference
From May 20–22, 2026, researchers, policymakers, practitioners and community leaders gathered at Concordia University's John Molson School of Business in Montreal for the 2026 Bridging Divides Conference, hosted by the Institute for Research on Migration and Society (IRMS). The conference explored how advanced digital technologies (ADTs) are reshaping migration journeys, governance systems and migrant experiences across every stage of migration.
Throughout the conference, participants reflected on the dual nature of digital technologies. While digital tools can expand access to information, services, employment opportunities and social connections, they can also reinforce surveillance, exclusion and unequal power relations. Discussions highlighted how technologies are never neutral, but are shaped by political priorities, institutional structures and broader social inequalities.
Sessions explored how ADTs influence migration across multiple dimensions:
- Migration governance and border management: examining the growing use of AI, biometrics, digital case management systems and automated decision-making tools, alongside questions of accountability, consent and human discretion.
- Labour and economic integration: exploring how digital recruitment platforms, online work, AI-driven hiring systems and platform economies are transforming access to employment while creating new forms of precarity and exclusion.
- Healthcare, services and community support: investigating how digital technologies affect access to healthcare, social services and information, as well as the barriers created by language, digital literacy and unequal access to technology.
- Social connection, participation and belonging: highlighting how migrants and refugees use digital tools to maintain transnational relationships, build support networks, navigate unfamiliar systems and participate in civic life.
A recurring theme throughout the conference was the tension between efficiency and equity. Participants examined how the integration of AI into migration systems can shift responsibility, fragment human discretion and obscure accountability, while also creating new opportunities for innovation and access. Discussions also emphasized the often invisible human labour behind AI systems and the evolving role of intermediaries who help migrants navigate increasingly digital environments. By bringing together diverse perspectives from research, policy and practice, the conference fostered critical conversations about how digital technologies are transforming migration today and what more equitable, accountable and human-centred approaches might look like in the future.
Emerging Scholars Poster competition
Congratulations to this year’s winners:
1st Place: Bowen H., The University of British Columbia
“Prompting Belonging: Migrant Oral Histories and Bias in Text-to-Video AI”
2nd Place & People’s Choice Award: Juliana Tinoco, Concordia University
“Driving Under Surveillance: Digital Control and Migrant Labour in Canada’s Trucking Industry”
3rd Place: Ralph Padilla, University of Alberta
“The Case of Chinook: Design Fiction as a Method for Studying Opaque Immigration Technologies”
About the theme
From Departure to Belonging: Advanced Digital Technologies between empowerment, control and exclusion in migrant journeys explores how ADTs have fundamentally transformed human mobility, reshaping every phase of the migration experience—from initial departure decisions to long-term integration and belonging.
Operating in a complex space between empowerment, control, and exclusion, these technologies simultaneously offer unprecedented opportunities for connection and advancement while creating new mechanisms of surveillance and barriers to participation.
