Biometric practices have moved around the world through colonial and postcolonial contexts, transnational exchange, and private sector developments. They have become central to a variety of public and private infrastructures. Often, biometric technologies and data are not built from scratch, rather they are reformulated and repurposed to fit new times, places, and contexts. Automated face and fingerprint identification on smartphones, and biometric data in ID cards, are underwritten by similar methods of body measurement developed by 19th and 20th century eugenics, anthropology, statistics, and criminology researchers. States have appropriated biometric databases as digital platforms, which often serve as foundations upon which other infrastructures are organized. Biometric systems have been used, and reused, for purposes ranging from the delivery of government services to policing, from tracking refugees to COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

This open track invites submissions that address the movement of biometric practices, and their social consequences. Panelists will explore not only how biometric techniques constitute emerging forms of identity governance, but also how they move across time and place, reorganize existing practices, and produce new kinds of infrastructures. Even in new contexts, biometric systems carry the biases and intentions of prior ones. These systems can fail, and present asymmetrical benefits and harms that reinforce inequalities related to race, gender, class, age, and disability. These systems also shape the lived experiences of citizenship, migration, surveillance, and access to services. This panel welcomes papers that leverage STS concepts and methods to probe the trajectories, implementations, and implications of biometrics on the move.