Description
This paper examines the role of the notion of ‘expertise’ in governing of security through the lens of risk. It engages this question with empirical focus on the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) border security programme and by examining its original contract documents. In 2004, the US-VISIT contract was awarded by the US Department of Homeland Security to the group of private companies who called themselves the Smart Border Alliance. It was a pioneering border security programme that recast border security as inherently a problem of perpetual risk management and hence recalibrated corresponding security practices by institutionalising far greater reliance on digitisation and data. The Smart Border Alliance included technology companies (e.g., Dell), consulting companies (e.g., Accenture that also led the group), as well as security companies (e.g., Titan Corporation). Together, they lay the claim to their collective ‘expertise’ in reformulating the USA’s border security practices and the reframing of border security through the lens of perpetual risk management. Through examination of original contract documents, this paper contributes to critical security studies scholarship by presenting a process-tracing genealogy of the turn to ‘risk’ in border security governance.
