Surveillance at the Airport: Surveilling Mobility/Mobilising Surveillance

Abstract

In this paper the author is concerned with the relationship between mobility and practices of surveillance, examining their interconnections within the modern airport. Recent deliberations about airports define these spaces as free, empty of power and social relationships—open to mobility. The author questions these assumptions and explores the surveillance practices that work to control and differentiate movement, bodies, and identities within the airport. Four examples are discussed, ranging from techniques that ignore mobile passengers towards those that simulate them. The airport is argued to offer perhaps a blueprint for public space, intensifying the surveillance of movement through mobilised and combined forms of monitoring. The author concludes the paper by reflecting upon the implications for the mobility and identity of the passenger as spaces such as airports become increasingly reflexive.