Open AccessRisk Technologies and the Securitization of Post-9/11 Citizenship: The Case of National ID Cards in Canada.
Author(s) -
Kevin Walby,
Sean P. Hier
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
socialist studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1918-2821
pISSN - 1717-2616
DOI - 10.18740/s4np5j
Subject(s) - securitization , citizenship , national security , sovereignty , state (computer science) , ideology , political science , political economy , public administration , law , computer security , sociology , business , politics , finance , algorithm , computer science
The attacks of 11 September 2001 on Washington and New York continue to influence how governments manage im/migration, citizenship, and national security. One of the more contentious national security responses to the events of 9/11 in Canada has been the drive to introduce a biometric national identification card. In this paper, we argue that the drive for a Canadian national ID card is bound up in ideological processes which threaten to exacerbate, rather than to alleviate, state insecurities pertaining to risk, citizenship, and border (in) security. We maintain that ‘proof of status’ surveillance technologies, such as biometrically-encoded ID cards, lead to the ‘securitization’ of citizenship, and we conclude that ID cards threaten to destabilize the modern spatializations of sovereignty that they are purported to uphold under the guise of national security.