Biometrics as imperialism: age assessments of young asylum seekers in Denmark

Abstract

This article explores medical assessments of the age of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Denmark, to show how, through the medical and bureaucratic aspects of the process, it serves as an imperialist technology of control, as those judged under 18 have greater protection in the asylum system. Since the biggest group of people who are age-estimated in Denmark are Afghans, the author looks at the relationship between Denmark and Afghanistan and draws on interviews with people who underwent the process. By connecting medical documents with biometric measurement in colonial contexts and the current expansion of biometric surveillance, the author argues that the collection of intrusive physical data from Afghan minors is to be understood as a colonial mapping of the body. The Danish Immigration Service’s age decision-making process articulates a form of administrative rule that works to depoliticise questions of dispossession and death, and is a form of colonial violence enabled by humanitarian discourse and law.