"Documenting the Undocumented: Experimenting Europe at the Biometric Migrant Archive" with Dr Romm Lewkowicz (MPI Halle)

Research Factory B/ORDERS IN MOTION

Mi., 29 January 2025, 16:15 - 17:45

In presence, Senate Hall (HG 109)

With: Dr Romm Lewkowicz (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle)

[in English]

The talk highlights Lewkowicz's book project, an ethnography on the biometric governance of illegalised migrants in the EU. It explores how the undocumented migrant became a laboratory for experimentation in documentation technologies, particularly biometrics, and the implications of the policy fantasy of turning migrant bodies into identity documents and mobile carriers of borders. It draws on fieldwork conducted in EU policy circuits, Izmir's smuggling hubs, the biometric "hotspot" at the Greek island of Chios, and the diverse physical and legal paths of Middle Eastern and East African migrant interlocutors. Exploring how biometric identification is embodied and subverted by those it wishes to (un)document, the talk illuminates how this form of governance is transforming the practice of migration, the materiality of bureaucracy, the performance of citizenship and the body of Europe.

Registration is not required.