Biopower, racialization and new security technology

From fingerprinting in colonial contexts to scientific racism, and from face recognition pioneers to contemporary multi-modal surveillance, biometric security has long been connected to processes of racialization. Using both contemporary and historical examples, this article explores the rollout of biometric security, paying especial attention to how biometrics makes use of and relies upon racialized configurations of population. The article explores these connections and teases out the precise ways in which ‘race’ and racialization connect to the securitization of individual identities. This article also opens a space for a discussion of biopower, the most popular theoretical frame through which biometric security is currently being viewed.