Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the relative efficiency of digital bureaucracies and the extent to which it might impact the everyday lives of groups subjected to financial risk profiling. It presents the financial modalities of migration control and explains how welfare authorities screen and trace unattractive migrant groups that are associated with economic threat. The book provides empirical data on the mechanisms of surveillance strategies that promote efficiency and objectivity while justifying privatised practices of control and sanctions outside the field of crime control. It discusses the situational construction of Roma identity and the methodological framework this study has been built upon. The book explains how governance of mobility control turns into virtual social sorting of the poor in an intra-European mobility context.