ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on dynamic and responsive technological systems that afford new forms of categorisation and classification at the various nodes of contemporary dis-located and networked borderscapes. The border studies have developed from a sub-discipline of political science and historiography that predominantly directed attention to state borders into an interdisciplinary field that approaches borders from a variety of different vantage points. As a result of this, state-based advances are supplemented by frameworks that aim at assessing possible impacts of everyday practices, culture and aesthetics, media representations and technologies, or political economy. Biometrics-based systems of governance such as the European interoperational databases SIS II and Eurodac, or the US NEXUS programme entail new dynamics for bordering processes. In 2013 former US secret service contractor Edward Snowden started to leak sensitive information regarding the large-scale surveillance and bulk collection of global communication flows by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British General Communications Headquarter (GCHQ).
