Research

 

Currently I am working as Assistant Professor at the Centre for Applied Ethics, LiU, conducting research within the project "The Ethics of Migration".

 

Research project: The Ethics of Migration

Is there a right to exclude or a duty to admit immigrants? A widespread use of surveillance-based migration control, has made this a highly relevant question for discussion. Increasingly, sophisticated surveillance technologies are used to: control borders, differentiate between authorized and non-authorized migrants and continuously monitor migration flow.

Technologies employed for those purposes range from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), biometric based identification systems, infrared sensors, binocular thermal imaging systems, GPS-equipped bracelets, to the networking of vast databases like the Schengen Information System (II), the EURODAC fingerprint database and the Visa Information System. Importantly, technology with the capacity to trace and track individuals can harm fundamental human rights. Surveillance-based control systems make us of as well as produced potentially privacy sensitive personal data. Surveillance systems used to sort migrants into categories may also be used in discriminating ways.

This research project has two main objectives: (1) to analyze under what conditions, if at all, restrictions on migration can be ethically justified and (2) to evaluate the ethical acceptability of surveillance-based migration control. By analyzing these aspects, a well-founded basis for ethically defensible migration control can be identified.

In the first part, fundamental ethical questions related to migrants - regular and irregular, and migration, borders and border control are examined. Arguments for and against immigration restriction as well as rights and duties between nation states and migrants will be systematically analyzed. Examples of questions to be explored are:

• To what extent, if at all, are nation states in their right to restrict immigration?
• What rights and duties hold between migrants and nation states?
• And, in particular, what rights do irregular migrants have?
• How should the fundamental human right to seek asylum be understood and protected?

In the second, more applied part, ethical implications of particular surveillance devices and prevailing surveillance conduct are analyzed. Irrespective of whether one believes that nation states should be in their right to restrict immigration or not, one may still wish to minimize harmful consequences of surveillance-based migration control, e.g. to reduce the privacy invasive impact. Surveillance devices and systems in use (or under development) will be evaluted, such as for instance emerging biometric passports.

Areas of interest: Social and Political philosophy, Surveillance studies, Applied Ethics.

Publications

ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEW JOURNALS

• A declaration of healthy dependence - the case of home care, forthcoming in Health Care Analysis.
• An interactive ethical assessment of surveillance-capable software within the home-help service sector, forthcoming in: Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society 
• Who cares? Moral obligations in formal and informal care provision in the light of ICT-based home care, Forthcoming in Health Care Analysis.
• När vården flyttar hem till dig - den mobila vårdens etik, Etikk i Praksis, 2010, (4), 2, 71-92.
• När vården flyttar hem till dig - den mobila vårdens etik, Etikk i Praksis, 2010, (4), 2, 71-92.
• Privacy and Identity in Intercultural Information Ethics, Applied Ethics Challenges for the 21st Century, CAEP; Hokkaido, 2010, 98-108.
• Securing Privacy at Work: The Importance of Contextualized Consent. Ethics and Information Technology 11 (4), 2009.
• Privacy Expectations at Work—What is Reasonable and Why? Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (2) 2009.
• The Case for Ethical Technology Assessment (eTA), (written together with Sven Ove Hansson) Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 73, 2006, 543-558.

THESES

• The Ethics of Workspace Surveillance Doctoral Thesis, Royal Institute of Technology, 2007.
• Ethical Aspects of Workplace Surveillance, Licentiate Thesis, Royal Institute of Technology, 2005.

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

• Privacy and Public Access in the Light of E-Government: The Case of Sweden, (written together with Misse Wester) in:. Information Assurance and Security Ethics in Complex Systems, IGI Global, 2011, 206-225.
• Den nya s(p)årbarheten, chapter in Filosofins nya möten, K., Edvardsson, SO., Hansson and J. Nihlén-Fahlquist, (eds) Gidlunds förlag, 2005.

EDITED BOOKS

• Sven Ove Hansson and Elin Palm (eds.) The Ethics of Workplace Privacy, Peter Lang, Brussels 2005.
• (a) Sven Ove Hansson and Elin Palm, “Preface”, pp 9-10.
• (b) Sven Ove Hansson and Elin Palm, “Introduction. New Technologies – New Ethical Challenges”, pp 11-14.
• (c) Elin Palm “The Dimensions of Privacy”, pp 157-174.
• (d) Sven Ove Hansson and Elin Palm, “Conclusion”, pp 175-177.

BOOK REVIEWS

• “Responding to terrorism: Political, Philosophical and Legal Perspectives” by Imre, R., Mooney, B. and B. Clarke (2008) B. in Ethical Perspectives 16, No. 3, 2008.
• “Liberty, Property and Markets” by Daniel Attas, (2005), in Ethical Perspectives 13, 309-315, 2006.

PROCEEDINGS

• Information Security – for whom and why? Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference ETHICOMP 2008 Living, Working And Learning Beyond Technology Eds: T W Bynum, M C Calzarossa, I De Lotto and S Rogerson, 2008.
• “Ethical Aspects of Information Security”, Towards privacy enhancing security technologies – the next steps”. PASR – Preparatory Action on the enhancement of European industrial potential in the field of Security Research. Concluding Conference Proceedings. Ed. Johann Cas, 2008.
• Privacy protection – how and why? , in:. T.W., Bynum, S., Rogerson and K., Murata (eds), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference, Glocalisation: Bridging the Global Nature of Information and Communication Technology and Local Nature of Human Beings, ETHICOMP, 2007.
• An Ethical Questioning of Workplace Surveillance – strengthening employees’ negotiating power, in:. T.W., Bynum, S., Rogerson and N., Poloudi (eds), Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference, Challenges for the Citizen of the Information Society, ETHICOMP, 2004.

REPORTS

• Lindblom. L. et al.(2003), How agencies inspect: a comparative study of inspection policies in eight Swedish government agencies, Stockholm: SKI report (Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate), ISSN 1104-1374; no 36
   

Forskning