Speed, timing and duration: contested temporalities, techno-political controversies and the emergence of the EU’s smart border

ABSTRACT

Practices of border control increasingly rely on digital biometrics in order to sort and filter cross-border movements. But while its effects are well examined in migration and border studies, less is known about the intricate ways in which biometric bordering is politically negotiated and socio-technically put into practice. Therefore, in this paper, I trace the contested emergence of one particular scheme of biometric border control currently in the making: the EU’s Smart Borders Package. Proposed by the European Commission in 2013, it aims at digitally registering all third-country nationals’ entries to and exits from the Schengen area, while simultaneously accelerating the border crossing of certain travellers. I argue that, unlike other forms of biometric bordering, the Smart Borders Package problematises border control primarily on the level of its temporalities and constitutes the speed of border crossings, the timing of control as well as third-country nationals’ duration of stay as distinct objects of governing. Meanwhile, the project’s political negotiations have sparked techno-political controversies that repeatedly brought it to the brink of failure. Yet, these controversies have significantly enhanced the intelligibility and practicability of biometric bordering, contributing to the emergence of what I call the self-service border.

KEYWORDS:

• Biometrics
• border control
• EU smart border
• technology
• temporality

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Martina Tazzioli and Fiorenza Picozza for giving me the opportunity to prepare an early draft of this paper for their workshop Questioning the Temporalities and Cartographies of Migration at King’s College London in October 2016, and the anonymous reviewers and in particular Stephan Scheel for their valuable comments on previous versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Simon Sontowski http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0545-3482

Notes

1 The third legislative proposal contained provisions for adapting and amending the Schengen Borders Code, i.e. the legislative framework on how to conduct border checks at the external borders of the EU, taking into account the changes induced by the EES and the RTP.

2 See the video recording of this meeting at http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/en/committees/video?event=20130917-0900-COMMITTEE-LIBE.

3 MEP Ioan Enciu, European Parliament’s LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 17 September 2013.

4 MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 17 September 2013.

5 MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 17 September 2013.

6 Ioan Dragoș Tudorache, DG HOME, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 17 September 2013.

7 MEP Franziska Keller, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 17 September 2013. Author’s translation from the German original.

8 Interview with Member State’s Smart Borders Coordinator, Brussels, 6 March 2015.

9 Interview with Member State’s Smart Borders Coordinator, Brussels, 6 March 2015.

10 Interview with the assistant of European Parliament’s Smart Borders’ rapporteur, Brussels, 5 March 2015.

11 Frank Paul, DG HOME, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 23 January 2014.

12 MEP Franziska Keller, LIBE-Committee Meeting, Brussels, 23 January 2014.

13 German border guard during Smart Borders pilot project, Frankfurt International Airport, 11 September 2015.

14 Fares Rahmun, Federal Office of Administration, project manager of the German Smart Borders pilot project, 14th International Conference of the Biometric Special Interest Group (BIOSIG), Darmstadt, 10 September 2015.

15 Fares Rahmun, Federal Office of Administration, project manager of the German Smart Borders pilot project, 14th International Conference of the Biometric Special Interest Group (BIOSIG), Darmstadt, 10 September 2015.

16 Fares Rahmun, Federal Office of Administration, project manager of the German Smart Borders pilot project, 14th International Conference of the Biometric Special Interest Group (BIOSIG), Darmstadt, 10 September 2015.