‘Crisis’, control and circulation: Biometric surveillance in the policing of the ‘crimmigrant other’
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14613557231184696 |
| Author | Matthias Wienroth,Nina Amelung |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Technology in Policing |
‘Crisis’, control and circulation:
Biometric surveillance in the policing
of the ‘crimmigrant other’
Matthias Wienroth
University of Northumbria, UK
Nina Amelung
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract
Automated facial recognition, the use of dactyloscopic data and advanced forensic DNA analyses are becoming domina nt
technological surveillance means for ‘crimmigration’control. ‘Crimmigration’describes the increasing criminalisation of
migration, based on a perceived ‘crisis’of mass migration and its assumed negative impact on national stability and welfare,
materialising in overlapping crime and migration control regimes. We analyse the policing of migration through biometric
technologies as the reproduction of social practices of security against crime. By combining concepts of social practices
and ethical regimes, we suggest that biometric ethical regimes are constituted by social practices working towards legit-
imising the use of biomaterials and biodata. This analytical synthesis supports us in exploring how biometric technologies
deployed in the policing of crime circulate into the policing of migration and vice versa. First, technologies as materials
(DNA, fingerprints, facial images, analysis kits, databases, etc.) are inscribed with assumptions about validating identity and
suspicion, and are increasingly made accessible as data across policy domains. Second, forensic competence moves in
abstracted forms of expertise independent of context and ethics of application, creating challenges for reliable and legit-
imate technology deployment. Third, biometric technologies, often portrayed as reliable, useful, accurate policing tools,
travel from crime into migration control with meanings that construct generalised criminal suspicion of migrants. To evi-
dence the complexity and difficulty of achieving accountability and responsibility for the ethical governance of biometric
technologies in policing, we trace how the goals, risks, benefits and values of biometric technologies are framed, and how
the legitimacy of their deployment in policing of migration is constructed and negotiated.
Keywords
Eurodac, sBMS, forensic DNA phenotyping, legitimacy, ethics, generalized suspicion against migrants
Submitted 8 Feb 2023, Revise received 27 Apr 2023, accepted 5 Jun 2023
Introduction
In 2015/2016, European governments faced a significant
increase in migration, in particular due to civil war and
unrest in Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa. Germany and
Sweden registered the highest share of immigration, with the
former counting over 1.4 million asylum or refuge seekers.
European societies became polarised publics, torn between a
‘welcome culture’(e.g. Germany’s then Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s‘open door’policy) and hostility. Influenced by a
public discourse of moral panic and mistrust towards asylum
and refuge seekers, sceptical publics viewed the development
with rising concern about impacts on crime, employment and
Corresponding author:
Matthias Wienroth, Centre for Crime & Policing, Department of Social
Sciences, Northumbria University, Squires Building, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 8ST, UK.
Email: matthias.wienroth@northumbria.ac.uk
Special Issue: Technology in Policing
International Journal of
Police Science & Management
2023, Vol. 25(3) 297–312
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14613557231184696
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living standards. In this context of heightened attention, two
criminal cases involving asylum seekers in Germany at the
end of 2016 raised the stakes for migration control as a task
shared by criminal justice. Maria Ladenburger was killed by
Hussein Khavari in Freiburg/Breisgau on 16 October 2016,
and Anis Amri drove a lorry into a busy Christmas market
in Berlin on 19 December of the same year, eventually
bringing about the deaths of 13 people. Although excep-
tional, both cases contributed to the articulation of a
‘crisis’of control over migrants, specifically criminal
migrants. Two types of biometric identification technolo-
gies –forensic DNA phenotyping (fDp) and dactyloscopy
(or fingerprinting) –played a vital role in public debate
about the investigations, and were portrayed as holding
the potential to either prevent or avoid follow-up killings.
fDp was discussed in the case of the murder of Maria
Ladenburger in October 2016. fDp is seen as a means to
infer the appearance of an unknown person (subject to the
expectation that non-European asylum seekers look differ-
ent from the general population of European states) and
thus may help with decision-making processes in investiga-
tions that lack other intelligence. Dactyloscopy, especially
the databasing of fingerprints and cross-border exchanges
of such data between European Union (EU) Member
States, was problematised as part of the investigation of
the Amri case. In both cases, the European Asylum
Dactyloscopy Database (Eurodac) was initially critiqued
as failing in its attributed role as an asylum-tracking and
early warning system, and yet later acquired the status of
a key biometric tool for crime control of asylum seekers.
In this article, we analyse the policing of migration
through biometric technologies and frame it as the repro-
duction of social practices of crime management. Crime
management is a key logic of policing that emphasises
the prevention, detection and prosecution of crime.
Technological innovation and interventions, including the
production and analysis of biometric data, are associated
with enabling more effective and efficient law enforcement
and criminal justice (Williams and Wienroth, 2017). A
broad continuum of migrants engages borders, and their
experiences of the border differ greatly: from work and
leisure-related travel at one end of the spectrum, via
looking for better life chances and fleeing catastrophes, to
border crossing for criminal and terrorist purposes at the
other, different migration rationales and patterns encounter
diverse border practices and governance. We analyse
migration control as closely linked to crime control within
the context of the Global North’s perception of, and
response to, a ‘crisis’of mass migration: media and policy-
makers have suggested that ‘refuge and terror are siblings’
(Süddeutsche Zeitung on 10 December 2015; Holzberg
et al., 2018), implying that crime and migration are
closely linked, especially when it comes to migration
under refuge and asylum frameworks. The notion of crisis
is perpetuated in public discourse in the Global North
more generally, e.g. in terms of creating a ‘really hostile
environment for illegal immigrants’(then UK Home
Secretary Theresa May in The Daily Telegraph newspaper
on 25 May 2012), alimenting such policy interventions by
creating ‘legal’and ‘illegal’types of migration, or even
by positing migration as ‘invasion’(then UK Home
Secretary Suella Braverman in a speech to the House of
Commons on 31 October 2022) by ‘bogus’asylum
seekers (UK Member of Parliament David Davis in the
Daily Mail newspaper on 31 October 2022).
This is a contested discourse, in society at large, in the
scholarly engagement with it and in the very practical
context in which crime and migration control are operatio-
nalised and executed. The overall aim of this article is to
inform the development of a reflexive, continuous and
multi-perspectival governance discourse (Wienroth,
2020a) by understanding the social practices of biometric
migration and crime control approaches. First, we consider
the concept of ‘crimmigration’(Stumpf, 2006) and the con-
figuration and enactment of the ‘crimmigrant other’
(Franko, 2020) through biometric surveillance technolo-
gies. Second, we develop a theoretical framework for the
analysis of biometric surveillance in the policing of migra-
tion by bringing together Shove et al.’s (2012) three core
components of social practice with Radin and Kowal’s
(2015) concept of ethical regimes, to explore how biometric
technologies deployed in the policing of crime circulate into
the policing of migration and vice versa; and, importantly,
how legitimacy for doing so is produced. Third, we return
to the two exemplary public controversies on forensic
DNA phenotyping and European biometric database
systems (Eurodac being our starting point) to evidence
how this form of construction of legitimacy builds on and
manifests certain forms of the ‘crimmigrant other’.
Therefore, we trace: (a) how goals, risks, benefits and
values of biometric surveillance technologies are framed;
and (b) the legitimacy of their deployment in policing of
migration is constructed and negotiated. We conclude by
discussing the complexity of achieving accountability and
responsibility for the ethical governance of biometric tech-
nologies in policing.
Crimmigration and configuring the
‘crimmigrant other’
‘Crimmigration’describes convergence of the previously
distinct legal spheres of crime and migration control
within the context of generalised criminal suspicion
towards migrants (Aas, 2011; Stumpf, 2006).
Furthermore, the progressive reduction of legal migration
routes leads to an active criminalisation of diverse forms
298 International Journal of Police Science & Management 25(3)
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