Issue Introduction: IDentities and Identity: Biometric Technologies, Borders and Migration

Biometric technologies using digital representations of bodily characteristics to identify individuals have become an institutionalised method of registering and recognising persons, thereby establishing their right to cross borders. Based on situated ethnographic fieldwork among tech-developers, bo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethnos 2022-03, Vol.87 (2), p.211-222
Main Authors: Grünenberg, Kristina, Møhl, Perle, Olwig, Karen Fog, Simonsen, Anja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Anthropology
Biometric identification
Biometric technologies
Biometrics
border control
Borders
Ethnography
Europe
Forensic science
Identification
identity
Migrants
Migration
Scrutiny
Social environment
Social identification
Uncertainty
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Summary:Biometric technologies using digital representations of bodily characteristics to identify individuals have become an institutionalised method of registering and recognising persons, thereby establishing their right to cross borders. Based on situated ethnographic fieldwork among tech-developers, border police, forensics, IT hacktivists and migrants, this special issue illuminates how biometric technologies are put to use and experienced by the diverse social actors who imagine and promote, develop, employ, are subjected to and attempt to circumvent such identification. In this introduction biometric identification (or IDentification) is presented as a relatively new area of investigation that has been subjected to little ethnographic scrutiny. It is argued that, while biometric technologies are promoted as enabling objective and incontestable IDentification of individuals, they are in practice embedded in specific social contexts, fraught with ambiguity and uncertainty, and dependent on substantial human interpretation and social identification. They are therefore of considerable interest and concern to anthropology.
ISSN:0014-1844
1469-588X
DOI:10.1080/00141844.2020.1743336