Exploring the Security/Facilitation Nexus: Foucault at the ‘Smart’ Border

This article critically engages the ongoing efforts of establishing a Registered Traveller Programme (RTP), as part of the Smart Borders Package, at the EU level. As the RTP seeks to flexibilise border management through the notions of risk and trustworthiness, the article suggests that a Foucauldian account of biopolitics can serve as a capable analytical tool. A biopolitical approach conceptualises the RTP's aims of business facilitation and border protection not as contradictory concepts, but rather as mutually constitutive and reinforcing elements. Thus, it helps to understand the current efforts to render the border “smart” in an attempt to govern security and the economy under a common framework—a framework, however, that commands critical investigation when it comes to the applied sorting mechanisms at the border.