ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the introduction of biometric technologies to register Malian refugees living in Burkina Faso. Despite introducing a biometric registration process in which humanitarians have more faith than in the refugees, ‘the refugee’ is still identified and produced on the basis of oral and written testimony and on specific representations and narratives, and only later on the basis of their body. The biometric dimension of refugee registration in Burkina Faso eventually proved ‘technologically useless,’ in that it was never exploited except for recording and storing data. For the majority of my interlocutors, the card issued after the biometric registration became ‘just a regular’ ID card, one that symbolizes a specific figure and truth of ‘the refugee’ and a narrative that biometrics did not have an impact on. One of the main representational characteristics that emerges as constructing ‘the refugee’ is innocence, a dimension explored in the last part of the chapter.
