The fabrication of a necessary policy fiction: the interoperability ‘solution’ for biometric borders

ABSTRACT This article investigates the European Union’s (EU) effort to establish an interoperable biometric border regime. Drawing on interview material and ethnographic observation, I explore how the technical concept of interoperability is performed and translated into a powerful policy for infrastructuring borders in Europe. This article suggests that policymaking has been dominated by enacting solutionist ways of seeing and speaking about borders and migration. The complex concept of interoperability is thereby proposed as a convenient set of solutions to renewed problem-constructions, including the EU’s lack of authority in border policymaking, the complexity of the database landscape, and the uncertainty around capturing and fixing mobile identities. Interoperability has thus emerged as a necessary fiction in the border regime, directing visions, political discourse, and epistemic orientations toward a collectively imagined future of biometric border (in)security.