Biometrics, body normalization, and EU border control

Abstract

The European Union is increasingly using and experimenting biometric technologies for border control. The combination of data proceeding from diverse bodily sources, like iris, fingerprints, and face recognition among others, as well as the potential integration of behavioral markers raise a series of questions concerning individual data protection and privacy rights. Beyond those issues, however, biometrics poses challenges regarding the very definition of the human and the body. The so called “failures to enroll” at capturing biometric data reveal a construction of the “normal” body, while other bodies appear as less technologically compatible. This construction is reproducing assumptions that are deeply engraved in the Eurocentric imaginary, where the non-European other is constructed as being closer to “nature”. At the same time, it reveals the realm towards which contemporary border struggles and the possibility of contestation and resistance are being displaced, namely the very own body.