ABSTRACT
The convergence of biometrics and big data has become a widely used technique of governance in recent years. From border surveillance to healthcare management, governments and corporations are increasingly deploying biometrics and big data for various purposes. Whereas biometrics enables the management of identity at the individual level, big data techniques are enabling the surveillance and management of populations as a whole. The combination of these techniques has, as such, produced new ways of visualising and monitoring the body and identity at the level of both the individual and the population. In this chapter, I consider two examples of such convergence, namely refugee management technologies and consumer products relating to self-tracking and health monitoring. In juxtaposing these two examples, I aim to reveal how the ‘biometric datafication of the body’ is manifesting in top-down (governmental control of the refugee body) and bottom-up fashion (‘self-inflicted’ practices of self-tracking). This can help shed light on the complex and nuanced nature of contemporary surveillance culture as it is mediated through biometric and big data technologies.
