‘Crisis’, control and circulation: Biometric surveillance in the policing of the ‘crimmigrant other’

Automated facial recognition, the use of dactyloscopic data and advanced forensic DNA analyses are becoming dominant technological surveillance means for ‘crimmigration’ control. ‘Crimmigration’ describes the increasing criminalisation of migration, based on a perceived ‘crisis’ of mass migration and its assumed negative impact on national stability and welfare, materialising in overlapping crime and migration control regimes. We analyse the policing of migration through biometric technologies as the reproduction of social practices of security against crime. By combining concepts of social practices and ethical regimes, we suggest that biometric ethical regimes are constituted by social practices working towards legitimising the use of biomaterials and biodata. This analytical synthesis supports us in exploring how biometric technologies deployed in the policing of crime circulate into the policing of migration and vice versa. First, technologies as materials (DNA, fingerprints, facial images, analysis kits, databases, etc.) are inscribed with assumptions about validating identity and suspicion, and are increasingly made accessible as data across policy domains. Second, forensic competence moves in abstracted forms of expertise independent of context and ethics of application, creating challenges for reliable and legitimate technology deployment. Third, biometric technologies, often portrayed as reliable, useful, accurate policing tools, travel from crime into migration control with meanings that construct generalised criminal suspicion of migrants. To evidence the complexity and difficulty of achieving accountability and responsibility for the ethical governance of biometric technologies in policing, we trace how the goals, risks, benefits and values of biometric technologies are framed, and how the legitimacy of their deployment in policing of migration is constructed and negotiated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Innovating public participation methods: technoscientization and reflexive engagement

We reconstruct the innovation journey of ‘citizen panels’, as a family of participation methods, over four decades and across different sites of development and application. A process of aggregation leads from local practices of designing participatory procedures like the citizens jury, planning cell, or consensus conference in the 1970s and 1980s, to the disembedding and proliferation of procedural formats in the 1990s, and into the trans-local consolidation of participatory practices through laboratory-based expertise since about 2000. Our account highlights a central irony: anti-technocratic engagements with governance gave birth to efforts at establishing technoscientific control over questions of political procedure. But such efforts have been met with various forms of reflexive engagement that draw out implications and turn design questions back into matters of concern. An emerging informal assessment regime for technologies of participation as yet prevents closure on one dominant global design for democracy beyond the state.BMBF, 01UU0906, Innovation in Governanc

Governing expectations of forensic innovations in society: the case of FDP in Germany

This article is about the governance of expectations of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) innovations in Germany used for the prediction of human externally visible traits such as eye, hair, and skin color, as well as biological age and biogeographic ancestry. In 2019, FDP technologies were regulated under the label “extended DNA analysis”. We focus on the expectations of members of the forensic genetics’ community in Germany, in anticipation and response to those of regulators who advocated for such technologies. Confronted with regulators’ expectations of omnipotent technologies and the optimistic promise that they will enhance public security, forensic geneticists responded with attempts to adjust such expectations, specifying limits and risks, along with a particular logic sorting matters of concern. We reflect on how forensic geneticists’ govern expectations through forms of distributed anticipatory governance, delimiting their obligations, and distributing accountability across the criminal justice system.This work was supported by H2020 European Research Council [grant number 648608] and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [grant number CEECIND/03611/2018/CP1541/CT0009]

Modes of bio-bordering: the hidden (dis)integration of Europe

This open access book explores how biometric data is increasingly flowing across borders in order to limit, control and contain the mobility of selected people, namely criminalized populations. It introduces the concept of bio-bordering, using it to capture reverse patterns of bordering and ordering practices linked to transnational biometric data exchange regimes. The concept is useful to reconstruct how the territorial foundations of national state autonomy are partially reclaimed and, at the same time, partially purposefully suspended. The book focuses on the Prüm system, which facilitates the mandatory exchange of forensic DNA data amongst EU Member States. The Prüm system is an underexplored phenomenon, representing diverse instances of bio-bordering and providing a complex picture of the hidden (dis)integration of Europe. Particular legal, scientific, technical and political dimensions related to the governance and uses of biometric technologies in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom are specifically explored to demonstrate both similar and distinct patterns.UIDB/00736/202

The emergence of citizen panels as a de facto standard

Au cours des dernières décennies, l’intérêt grandissant pour l’organisation de la délibération et la participation des citoyens s’est accompagné d’innombrables designs et d’« instruments prêts à l’emploi », tels que les conférences de consensus, les ateliers de scénario, les sondages délibératifs, les jurys de citoyens ou les cellules de planification. Le développement de ces « innovations démocratiques » a eu pour corollaire l’apparition d’une communauté professionnelle regroupant consultants, praticiens, décideurs et experts scientifiques, impliqués dans le design, la mise en œuvre, l’évaluation et le marketing de ces nouveaux outils. Cet article vise à comprendre comment trois innovations spécifiques (les cellules de planification, les conférences de consensus et les jurys citoyens) ont été l’objet d’une standardisation, portée par ce type de communauté professionnelle.In recent decades, growing interest in organized citizen deliberation and participation arose with an uncounted number of designs of ready-made-instruments such as consensus conferences, scenario workshops, deliberative polls, citizens’ juries, planning cells. The emergence of these « democratic innovations » accompanies an increasing professionalized community of consultants, practitioners, policy makers and scientific experts involved in designing, implementing, evaluating and marketing new approaches. This paper aims to understand how three specific innovations (planning cell, citizen jury and consensus conference) have been standardized according to the action of this type of professional community

Communicating forensic genetics: 'enthusiastic' publics and the management of expectations

[Excerpt] ‘One of the most important problems in forensic medicine’, write foren- sic geneticists Angel Carracedo and Lourdes Prieto, ‘is the so-called “CSI effect”’ (Carracedo & Prieto 2018: 4). Their description of the threat posed by TV shows such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) to their dis- cipline runs as follows: ‘[m]ost TV series present forensic evidence as infallible – one hundred percent reliable, with no margin for doubt – when reality is very different: the scientific validity of forensic tests is variable’ (ibid.) [...].This work received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 648608), within the project ‘EXCHANGE – Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy’, led by Helena Machado and currently hosted at the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS), Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Minho, Portugal

Technologies, infrastructures and migrations: material citizenship politics

This article aims to explore the multiple uses and consequences of different technologies and infrastructures in the context of migrations and how such uses and consequences inhabit and transform migrants’ rights and subjectivities. It reviews relevant literature at the intersection of citizenship, critical migration studies and science and technology studies (STS), focusing in particular on the current debates underway within critical citizenship studies that examine how technologies and infrastructures shape the ability to acts of citizenship. By mobilizing insights from STS, we focus on how these political subjectivities are shaped by certain sociomaterial and epistemic practices. By introducing the notion of material citizenship politics, the article outlines a way to differentiate three different constitutive forms between technologies, infrastructures and citizenship in migrations. Technologies and infrastructures can (1) constrain acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes; (2) constitute contestation and participation over citizenship; or (3) enable and shape alternative acts of citizenship in migration and border regimes. As it provides a theoretical background to the special issue, the article also serves as the introduction to the issue.This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Consolidation grant, agreement No. [648608]), within the project `EXCHANGE -Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy', led by Helena Machado and hosted at the Institute for Social Sciences of at the University of Minho, Portugal. Furthermore, this work is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT/MEC) through national funds within the scope of the CES-SOC/UID/50012/2020 Strategic Project

Challenging futures of biodiversity offsets and banking : Critical issues for robust forms of biodiversity conservation

The underlying project “Innovation in Governance” (Grant No. 01UU0906) from which this publication derives is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany.The interactive and anticipatory assessment exercise on which this report is based was part of a broader research project that focused on the innovation dynamics of governance instruments in the areas of environmental markets, public participation methods and sustainability transition management. By circulating these workshop results, we seek to contribute to a debate on biodiversity offsets and banking design with regard to constituting political reality in biodiversity conservation models.BMBF, 01UU0906, Innovation in Governanc

Students in the Sex Industry: Motivations, Feelings, Risks, and Judgments

Student sex work is a current phenomenon all over the world, increasingly reported by the media in recent years. However, student sex work remains under-researched in Germany and is lacking direct first-hand reports from the people involved. Further, sex work remains stigmatized, and therefore, students practicing it could be at risk of social isolation and emotional or physical danger. Therefore, this study examines students working in the sex industry focusing on their personal experiences and attitudes toward them. An online questionnaire was completed by 4386 students from Berlin universities. Students who identified themselves as sex workers (n = 227) were questioned with respect to their motivations to enter the sex industry, characteristics of their job, feelings after the intercourse, and perceived risks. Student non-sex workers (n = 2998) were questioned regarding knowledge of and attitudes toward student sex workers. Most student sex workers reported that they entered the sex industry due to financial reasons (35.7%). The majority reported offering services involving direct sexual intercourse. Disclosing their job to friends, family, or others was associated with less problems with social isolation and in romantic relationships. With a total of 22.9%, student non-sex workers reported never having heard about students working in the sex industry. The most frequent emotions mentioned by them with regard to student sex workers were compassion and dismay (48.9%). There was no difference in happiness between student sex workers and non-sex working students. Through this research, it becomes evident that there are similarities between the student's motivations to enter the sex industry, their feelings, and the problems they have to face. Moreover, prejudices still prevail about the life of student sex workers. Increasing understanding of student sex work might help those sex workers to live a less stigmatized life and thereby to make use of support from others. The universities as institutions could form the basis for this, e.g., by openly supporting student sex workers. This could help to encourage the rights of student sex workers and to gain perspective with respect to the sex industry

Challenging futures of citizen panels : critical issues for robust forms of public participation

The underlying project “Innovation in Governance” (Grant No. 01UU0906) from which this publication derives is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany.The interactive and anticipatory assessment exercise on which this report is based was part of a broader research project that focused on the innovation dynamics of governance instruments in the areas of public participation methods, environmental markets and sustainability transition management. By circulating these workshop results, we seek to contribute to a debate on citizen panel design with regard to constituting political reality in public participation models.BMBF, 01UU0906, Innovation in Governanc