Capturing the Spirit of Bureaucratic Images: Photo IDs, Biometrics, and Passing in Border‐Free Europe

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article looks at how the biometric surveillance of migrants in the European Union interweaves border‐passing with the embodied capacity to pass as, or against, one's bureaucratic image. Despite biometrics' promise to eliminate photographic mediation, photo IDs are embedded in biometric regulation, which further entangles bodies and photographs. Based on ethnographic research in the Turkish city of Izmir, the migrant hotspot of Chios in Greece, and Athens' counterfeit document market, this article examines the material, embodied, and performative experiments migrants employ to pass borders while negotiating their bureaucratic images (both authentic and fake). Photographs emerge as a regime of practice through which European citizenship is enacted and exercised.