ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up the challenge of addressing the question of technological development and states of emergency by focusing on the role of biometric and bio-surveillance in the management of the EU refugee influx after 2011. Hitchcock shows how the development of biometrics feeds off the demands of necessity characterizing exceptional situations. Hitchcock argues that biometrics partly functions to differentiate measure around how a “crisis” is defined, characterized, and overcome. Thus, the European Union relies on biometrics to underpin a strategy of externalization aimed at the spatial displacement of the refugee crisis. What is more, extending databases and surveillance infrastructures far beyond its physical borders enables EU authorities to turn back possible asylum cases before they reach Europe.
