The Border Tech Lab (BTL) is a hands-on pedagogical and interdisciplinary research site where members explore material and symbolic sociotechnical relations. Of chief concern to us is the making of boundaries (understood as conceptual, epistemological, political demarcations) through practices of encounter, difference, and signification. Our work studies a range of phenomena, from the regulation and ordering of labor and the construction of classifications to the making and meanings of human-machine configurations. Primarily focused on the US-México borderlands, we also conduct research in other geographical areas.

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The BTL currently works in three areas: information technologies and border enforcement; computing in the Américas; and the future of work. These areas are studied through team-based research using a variety of methods that include archival research, oral history, critical inquiry, and discourse analysis. Our work draws together critical analytical frames and methods from American and ethnic studies, science & technology studies, digital studies, history, anthropology, and sociology.