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Pilot programmes and postcolonial pivots : pioneering 'DNA Fingerprinting' on Britain's borders
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Bivins, Roberta E. (2023) Pilot programmes and postcolonial pivots : pioneering 'DNA Fingerprinting' on Britain's borders. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 65 (2). pp. 346-371. doi:10.1017/S0010417522000494 ISSN 0010-4175.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417522000494
Abstract
Developed in Britain and the USA in the 1980s, genetic profiling has since become a global technology. Today, it is widely regarded as the evidentiary ‘gold standard’ in individual and forensic identification. However, its origins as a technology of post-empire at Britain’s externalised borders in South Asia have remained unexamined. This article will argue that the first state-sanctioned use of ‘DNA fingerprints’, a pilot programme exploring its value in disputed cases of family reunification migration from Bangladesh and Pakistan to Britain’s postcolonial cities, repays closer examination. National and transnational responses to the advent of genetic profiling as an identification technology demonstrate the interplay between imperial and postcolonial models and networks of power and truth production. At the same time, this experiment pre-figured and conditioned the wider reception of DNA profiling in matters of kinship. Far from being a footnote, the use of genetic profiling by migrants determined to exercise their legal rights in the face of a hostile state also worked to naturalise genetic ties as the markers of ‘true’ familial relationships.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | D History General and Old World > D History (General) J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration Q Science > QP Physiology |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | DNA fingerprinting -- Bangladesh, DNA fingerprinting -- Pakistan, Family reunification, Emigration and immigration -- History -- 20th century, Identification, Postcolonialism, Border security | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Comparative Studies in Society and History | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0010-4175 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | April 2023 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 65 | ||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 346-371 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0010417522000494 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Copyright Holders: | © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 26 July 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 July 2022 |
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