Standardizing security: the business case politics of borders

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of standards and standardization in the regulation of security and mobility through the EU’s Mandate M/487 and biometric Automated Border Control (ABC) systems. It argues that the choice for facial recognition as the standard biometric modality was largely pre-configured through the inertia of sedimented infrastructures, and that the restructuring of the EU external borders in the case of ABC therefore to a certain extent lacks political agency. Instead, standardization here follows an approach of business case politics that forecloses alternative solutions, and notably becomes productive of specific types of accelerated mobilities.