"Crimmigration Control" across Borders: The Convergence of Migration and Crime Control through Transnational Biometric Databases

Abstract

New cross-border regimes of biometrics and databasing in the EU are contributing to a conflation of the treatment of irregularity, asylum seeking, and criminality. States provide migrants' biometric data to transnational databases that are increasingly interoperable in the area of migration and crime control, to be accessible for state-based law enforcement actors. This article uses the case of Eurodac - a biometric database initially developed for migration control purposes - to explore the ongoing expansion of law enforcement access to the collected information for the purpose of crime control. The article studies how borders are selectively made permeable for biometric data flows in the light of "crimmigration" discourses. It combines insights from critical migration, border, and security studies that address the increasing overlapping of migration and crime control in policy discourse, law, and surveillance technologies. The study addresses the reconfiguration of crimmigration - and the normalisation and diversification of the figure of the "crimmigrant other" - through the expansion of cross-border flows of biometric data by law enforcement.