The Right to a Family Life and the Biometric ‘Truth’ of Family Reunification: Somali Refugees in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Biometric assessment of refugees’ applications for family reunification has become standard practice in many countries when ‘credible’ legal documentation of kin relations is lacking. Studies have criticised biometrics for objectifying families as bio-genetic units as part of a ‘new regime of truth’ that regards bodies as sources of truth about individuals ‘real’ identity. This article argues that, while biometric verification poses severe limitations on the right to reunification, it does not undo refugees’ agency. Ethnographic analysis of Somali refugees’ family unification in Denmark since the 1990s demonstrates how they have actively negotiated shifting legislation, initially applying their own interpretation of the family and attempting to circumvent biometric control, eventually appropriating the biometrically defined nuclear family as a practical tool to rework family life under new social conditions. This points to the importance of recognising the agency of those exposed to the truth regime.

KEYWORDS:

• Biometric border control
• DNA
• family reunification
• Somali refugees
• Denmark

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments by the three anonymous reviewers and the editors at Ethnos, the participants in the workshop ‘Minority families and the law’ held at Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, and the other members of the research group ‘Biometric Border Worlds’. I also wish to thank those who participated in the research project, most of all the Somalis who shared their experiences with family reunification with me, and the Velux Foundation that funded the research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 All translations from Danish by the author.

2 According to Kleist (2007: 102), 800,000–1,500,000 fled from Somalia, mainly to refugee camps in Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and Djibouti, whereas about two million Somalis became internally displaced, the latter figure decreasing to 500,000 in 1994 and 200,000 in 1997.

3 One story was later used by Danish politicians to argue for the introduction of lower welfare benefits for newly arrived refugees (Kleist 2007: 127; Hervik 2011: 62).

4 Similarly negative media coverage of Somali refugees is reported for other Western societies (e.g. Engebrigtsen 2011; Johnsdotter 2015; Besteman 2016).

5 This pattern still exists. One of the Somali refugees interviewed in Kenya had lived with his uncle in Nairobi for educational purposes, while his older brother had carried on camel herding.

6 All names have been changed in order to protect individuals’ anonymity.

7 For more detailed discussion of this case, see Olwig et al. (2019).

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Velux Foundation.