Formatting European security integration through database interoperability

Abstract

In this article, we explore the security politics of EU database interoperability, inquiring how knowledge infrastructures underpin European security integration. Sitting at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and critical approaches to European security, we unpack the co-constitutive relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms. By database anxieties, we refer to what European institutions identify as the main epistemic and operational concerns that emerge from the current use of databases by security authorities across Europe. These anxieties are expected to be resolved by mechanisms that foster interoperability. We argue that the relation between database anxieties and interoperability mechanisms shapes the novel conditions of possibility for European security integration in a datafied world. While far-reaching in technological terms, interoperability is not about introducing a new overarching system, but about the management, re-organisation and re-purposing of datasets. Such formatting matters politically because it eventually informs sovereign acts of policing and mobility control.

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