Paper long abstract:

The problem of uncontrolled migration flows is managed with new legal and technical means in Europe. While family reunification is generally accepted as a legitimate and even preferred way of migration, it is also accepted that notion the idea of family is unavoidably dubious. This paper deals with the case of Finland, the first European country to officially establish the procedure of DNA testing in family reunification, in particular for the first major group of refugees, Somalis. From an anthropological perspective, the familial relationships emphasized in legislation cannot be divorced from the arguable yet fruitful idea of kinship in the era of crises and uncertainties. While the dichotomies biological/social or real/faked are quite easily applied in this setting, they may not be as self-evident - and hence measurable- labels as presumed.