F07: From Selective Migration to People as Asset Class

Bottom Line

Migration systems have always been selective and discriminatory, but operated through a mix of formal restrictions and informal flows, often maintaining a humanitarian facade. The facade is dropping. People are now processed as stratified assets, with mobility privileges determined by economic value, cultural “scoring,” security risk algorithms, skill categories and country of origin.

Nations now openly engineer population inflows and outflows to maximise returns, skills being treated as strategic resources trapped within alliance structures and subject to gatekeeping based on ethnonationalism and institutionalised xenophobia. In some, third-party detention becoming a profit centre.

This shift from implicit to explicit valuation of human capital represents a fundamental ethical transformation in how human movement is governed globally. Rather than enabling more humane management of immigration systems, technology is accelerating explicit valuation, categorisation, control and exploitation.  

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Content relevant to this forecast will be posted here as it is developed.