A presentation by Katie Schwarzmann, Foreign Qualified Lawyer at Equity Generation Lawyers. This event is part of the Fundamental Rights Research Colloquium under the "Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees" cluster hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin.
In 2021, the UK Home Office launched its strategy to ‘become digital by design’. This included increasing its use of automated decision-making (ADM) to replace or assist human decision-makers. As a lawyer representing migrants, I witnessed firsthand that these technological developments were outpacing intellectual inquiry and regulation. Today, it remains largely unknown when or how ADM tools influence decisions in the UK’s immigration systems, limiting my clients’ ability to scrutinise them. This is concerning because decisions in this context can, at best, be the difference between someone being able to take up work, education or life opportunities, and at worst, have life or death consequences. Effective regulation of ADM tools in the immigration system is therefore critical. The UK is not alone in grappling with these issues. Both the USA and Canada have deployed algorithms to streamline their immigration processes. Canada uses ADM tools to triage applications into simple cases for automated processing and complex cases for human review, as well as to flag ‘high-risk’ applications. In the USA, algorithms help, for example, decide whether migrants should be detained or matched to areas with better employability prospects. In the spring and summer of 2024, with funding from the Churchill Fellowship, I travelled across the USA and Canada. I interviewed policy professionals, software developers, civil society representatives, migrants’ organisations, lawyers and civil servants to explore how each country uses and regulates ADM tools. My report consolidates key findings from my research and provides policy recommendations for best practice in the UK.
Katie Schwarzmann has a background in public law and human rights specialising in strategic litigation at the intersection of migrants’ rights and emerging technologies. In the UK, Katie brought the first case challenging the government’s policy of indefinitely GPS-tagging migrants. Katie now works in Sydney at Equity Generation Lawyers focusing on strategic cases addressing climate change.
In 2017, Katie graduated with first-class honours in History and Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. For her examination performance, she was awarded the Rowley Mainhood Prize, Arthur Tindal Hart Prize, Owen Scholarship and the Abdul Aziz Prize. Following graduation, she trained as a lawyer with the corporate law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where she completed a secondment to the human rights NGO, Liberty. She then went on to work in the human rights departments of Hickman & Rose and Wilson Solicitors LLP.
In 2023, Katie was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to prepare a comparative study on the uses and regulation of automated decision-support tools in the immigration systems of the USA, Canada and the UK. Katie is also studying part-time for a master’s degree in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford.
The 2025 spring semester colloquium is co-hosted by the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the research project "AFAR: Algorithmic Fairness for Asylum Seekers and Refugees", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. This 4-year collaborative research, investigates the use of new technologies in migration and asylum governance. The research colloquium is co-organised by Dr. Mirko Đuković, Centre for Fundamental Rights, and Prof. Cathryn Costello, Centre for Fundamental Rights and University College Dublin. There are 28 students entitled to the certificate of colloquium.
Prior registration is required. Registered attendees will receive the dial-in details prior to the event. Please register here.