Securing Openness: A Policy Framework to Protect Cultural Mobility in the EU's Algorithmic Border Regime

The EU funds cultural mobility with one hand and surveils it with the other. While Creative Europe invests in transnational artistic exchange to project soft power, its algorithmic border regime, anchored by ETIAS and the Visa Information System (VIS), systematically flags these same professionals as elevated security risks. Refusal data for cultural professionals confirms this is not an edge case but a structural pattern: 77.1% of Schengen-based cultural organizations reported at least one experience of a rejected visa application for an invited professional since 2019 (Ellingsworth, 2023). 

This misclassification produces what this paper terms the “Ideological Cultural Migrant”: a subject whose legitimate professional mobility is voided through data correlations rather than individual conduct. The resulting contradiction generates three strategic vulnerabilities: it undermines EU soft power objectives, creates unappealable mobility exclusions, and degrades operational effectiveness by flooding security systems with low-priority false positives. Correcting this requires governance redesign: not expanded surveillance, but targeted, accountable risk assessment that can distinguish cultural professionals from genuine threats. 

The Structural Mismatch 

The EU border architecture, specifically the VIS and ETIAS, is encoded with a “resident traveller” script. This logic assumes that a legitimate visitor possesses a fixed domicile, stable salaried employment, and a predictable income, all factors the system uses as proxies to verify a “commitment to return” (Pelizza, 2023). 

However, the cultural sector operates on fundamentally different economic principles. Cultural professionals typically rely on project-based fees, irregular honoraria, and grant-dependent funding rather than traditional employment contracts (Clarke et al, 2024). Their careers often require hypermobility, moving frequently between residency programmes and international venues rather than maintaining a fixed professional base (Okunseinde, Horlitz, and Hillström, 2021).

When these professional norms are processed by algorithmic screening, the system mechanically translates them into risk indicators. The absence of a conventional employer or steady salary is flagged as insufficient proof of commitment to return, the leading cause of visa denials for cultural professionals (Ellingsworth, 2023). The regime produces false positives not by technical error, but by correctly executing a logic that is structurally incapable of recognising cultural labour as a legitimate category of movement. This failure is not merely administrative: it directly undermines the EU’s own strategic cultural objectives. It classifies transnational cultural professionals as migration risks, flagged not for what they have done, but for what their data profile suggests they represent. The “Ideological Cultural Migrant” is thus produced at the intersection of professional illegibility and algorithmic suspicion. 

The Soft Power Contradiction 

The EU border apparatus is currently in direct collision with its own foreign policy objectives. While instruments like Creative Europe and the European Cultural Foundation invest in cultural mobility to project continental values and build transnational relationships (European Commission, n.d.; European Cultural Foundation, 2020), the algorithmic regime of ETIAS and VIS treats these same vetted professionals as security liabilities. This institutional incoherence is not a mere irony, but a strategic self-sabotage that hollows out EU soft power. The contradiction is particularly acute: cultural actors are selected precisely for the perspectives and practices that fall outside Western institutional norms, then required to conform to those same norms to obtain entry. 

The damage to EU credibility is profound. When a professional formally invited and funded by a European institution is denied entry on the basis of data-driven risk profiles, the EU’s commitment to openness appears purely performative. This narrative failure is particularly acute in the Global South, where the EU competes for influence against authoritarian actors who capitalise on such visible contradictions (Chidambaram, 2024). 

This friction is compounded by a crisis of governance legitimacy. Rejections are structurally opaque: 45.5% of individual applicants and 59.3% of organisations received no legal justification for denials, despite this being compulsory under the EU’s own Visa Code (Ellingsworth, 2023). By excluding cultural partners through algorithmic logic that offers no meaningful right to explanation or correction, the EU erodes the rules-based order it seeks to champion internationally.  Addressing the structural misclassification of the “Ideological Cultural Migrant” is therefore not a peripheral concern: it is a prerequisite for diplomatic coherence and institutional credibility. 

Operational Degradation 

Misclassifying cultural professionals as security liabilities is not merely a diplomatic error, but an operational failure that degrades security effectiveness. Algorithmic border systems already suffer from a “base-rate fallacy”: in the EU’s Passenger Name Record system alone, five out of six flagged individuals are incorrectly identified (Haitsma, 2023). As ETIAS deploys comparable risk-scoring logic, analogous false positive rates represent a structural rather than incidental risk. Each flag requires intensive manual verification by National Units, consuming finite analytical resources and diverting attention from genuine high-priority threats. 

This misclassification also creates a self-reinforcing data pathology. A refusal based on “insufficient proof of commitment to return” generates a permanent negative credential that persists across VIS and the Common Identity Repository (CIR), feeding future screenings, compounding flags on low-risk individuals, and further inflating system noise (Jones, 2020). 

Fixing this structural mismatch is not a concession to soft power objectives; it is an operational upgrade. Calibrating risk models to recognise cultural hypermobility as a legitimate professional pattern would reduce false positives and restore analytical focus to genuine security threats.

Policy Recommendations 

To resolve the strategic contradiction at the heart of the “Ideological Cultural Migrant” problem, the EU must transition from blanket risk profiling to calibrated governance. The following recommendations are prioritised for their immediate technical feasibility and high strategic impact on EU soft power and operational integrity. 

1. Recalibrate economic risk indicators to recognise cultural labour. Current “resident traveller” scripts in VIS and ETIAS rely on salaried employment and fixed domicile as proxies for commitment to return, mechanically misclassifying the project-based, freelance reality of the cultural sector as migration risk. The ETIAS Central Unit should integrate EU-funded grant records and residency contracts into its bona fide status profiles to reflect these professional norms. By making cultural labour legible to the algorithm, the EU can substantially reduce the rejection rate for vetted professionals, improving situational awareness for National Units and allowing finite analytical resources to focus on genuine security threats rather than invited cultural partners. 
2. Implement “Soft Power Safeguards” within interoperability frameworks. The EU must establish governance firewalls ensuring that data from mobility instruments like Creative Europe functions as a positive credential rather than disappearing into undifferentiated risk clusters. Under the current interoperability architecture, a Creative Europe-funded professional may be flagged by ETIAS simply because their nationality or residence pattern matches a risk group, regardless of institutional vetting. Ensuring that participation in EU-funded programmes generates a whitelisted data derivative would end the institutional incoherence that currently sabotages diplomatic investments at the border, restoring the credibility of EU cultural engagement particularly across the Global South. 
3. Codify actionable rights to explanation and data correction. The “Ideological Cultural Migrant” is currently trapped by opaque, unappealable decisions that produce self-reinforcing negative credentials across interoperable databases. To restore both governance legitimacy and system accuracy, the EU must implement the transparency standards established by the CJEU in Ligue des droits humains, providing applicants with meaningful justifications for algorithmic rejections and effective mechanisms to correct misclassified data (Court of Justice of the European Union, 2022). This is not only a legal obligation, it is an operational necessity. Contestable, accurate border decisions prevent erroneous flags from compounding across systems, and uphold the rules-based order the EU champions as a matter of foreign policy. 

Conclusion 

Addressing the “Ideological Cultural Migrant” is a prerequisite for security resilience, not a concession to soft power. By recalibrating ETIAS and VIS to recognize professional hypermobility, the EU transitions from undifferentiated data-driven surveillance to genuine situational awareness. This is not a niche cultural grievance; it is a critical test of whether the Union can align its technological instruments with its strategic foreign policy objectives. True security resides in a governance architecture precise enough to facilitate the mobility it funds while accurately isolating genuine threats. Resolving this contradiction is essential for the long-term legitimacy and operational effectiveness of the European project. 

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