The European Union’s Entry/Exit System (EES): infrastructural journeys of a sociodigital future in-the-making

This article examines the infrastructuring of the European Union’s Entry/Exit System (EES) at the juxtaposed border controls of the United Kingdom and France. Drawing on expert interviews, industry conferences, and fieldwork conducted at the ports of Dover, Calais, and the Eurotunnel terminals, it traces the detours EES has taken on its journey from imaginary to implementation in response to material, political, and technical challenges. Requirements for the system such as capturing fingerprints to fulfil eu-LISA's interoperability objectives and enrolling biometrics within ‘line of sight’ of a European border guard have created thorny problems at the Channel ports where travellers arrive to the border in vehicles rather than on foot. Solving these problems has necessitated hard infrastructures and political compromises which have provided opportunities for other actors to influence the sociodigital future of EES through infrastructuring their preferred solutions. The fact that what EES is and will be has changed substantially before it has even entered into operation, shows the moment of suspension, between when work on a system starts and before it is complete, to be a decisive one for materially intervening in sociodigitial futures in the making.