Biometrifying the Border.

Traditionally understood as the "longest undefended border in the world," the boundary between the United States and Canada - its "friendly neighbour to the North" - has been an object of increasing scrutiny in post 9/11 security discourse. New technologies are playing a complex role in the process of uncovering the ideological and material edges between the United States and Canada. Since 9/11, biometrics - the science of using biological information for the purposes of identification - has become a crucial tool in describing this boundary. In my presentation I analyze the representation of biometrics at the boundaries of the nation state. I consider the discursive representation of biometrics technologies in recent Canada-US border agreements as able to solve the "problem" of the post 9/11 border. I review early media reports claiming that terrorists responsible for the attacks on the US entered across the Canadian border, and how they have served as justification for the expanded use of border biometrics. I examine US concerns about Canada’s allegedly liberal immigration and refugee policies that continue to cast Canada as the source of a racialized, "terrorist other." I argue that this narrative presents biometric technologies as a technology of power, capable of identifying suspect bodies crossing from north to south. In affixing a simplified representation of the body to a biometric identity document, I consider how time and space converge in technologies of embodiment to reconstruct and reify the boundaries of "othered" bodies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]