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Biotechnology and Bio Citizenship along the U.S.- Mexico Border

Wed, September 4, 9:45 to 11:15am, Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, Floor: Five, Grand Ballroom D

Abstract

Biotechnology and biosurveillance are now a critical part of surveillance and data gathering along the U.S.-Mexico border. Companies such as Quanergy, Anduril, BI2, Oculus, and DNA testing companies all have a stake in gathering data of U.S. citizens and undocumented people in port of entry and borderlands. Currently, it is legal to gather any biological data within 100 miles of any border, including oceanic. While surveillance and contentious relations along the U.S.-Mexico border is not new, what is new is the macro and micro level of scale in which data is gathered- from retina scanning to DNA blood testing.
This presentation looks at the recently funded biotechnologies used to determine U.S. citizenship. By looking at government documents, media, and interface analysis of biotech, I explore how undocumented people are valued as data to be gathered, and how the inclusion into U.S. citizenship is increasingly measured through biological data. Ultimately I argue that anxiety around the ‘unreadability’ of undocumented people creates an even greater flurry of data gathering and traceability of U.S. citizenship. With biotechnology, the ‘good’ citizen’s biological data is positioned as the opposite of the ‘undocumentable’ Latinx immigrant.

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