Itinerant Data: Unveiling Gendered Scrutiny at the Border

Abstract

As national borders are being transformed into technologized zones of securitization and national power, the surveillance of particular individuals and groups has become routine. Aided by a public culture of suspicion and belief in the neutrality of technology, national borders work to ferret out the digital tracks of those predetermined to be of risk or threat. Fortifying discriminatory structures of immigration control, the reworked digital frontier filters gendered bodies of risk and drafts their visual records for scrutiny. Engaging with the objections raised by Muslim American women wearing head cover to the unwarranted search of mobile phones at the border, this article addresses the entangled connections between nationalism, digital archives and transparency. The objections which center around the veil and data visibility serve as an embodied point of departure to rethink and render visible assumptions regarding national belonging in terms of the new itinerancy of data and marked bodies.