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This article proposes the concept of the biometric border in order to signal a dual-faced phenomenon in the


contemporarywar on terror: the turn to scientific technologies andmanagerial expertise in the politics of border management; and the exercise of biopower such that the bodies of migrants and travellers themselves become


sites of multiple encoded boundaries. Drawing on the US VISIT programme of border controls (United States


Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology), the article proposes three central themes of the politics of


the biometric border. First, the use of risk profiling as a means of governing mobility within the war on terror,


segregating ‘legitimate’mobilities such as leisure and business, from‘illegitimate’mobilities such as terrorism


and illegal immigration. Second, the representation of biometrics and the body, such that identity is assumed to


be anchored as a source of prediction and prevention. Finally, the techniques of authorization that allow the


surveillance ofmobility to be practiced by private security firms and homeland security citizens alike.Through-


out the article, I argue that, though the biometric border is becoming an almost ubiquitous frontier in thewar on


terror, it also contains ambivalent, antagonistic and undecidable moments that make it contestable.

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