Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork at an identity registration center to examine how biometrics authenticate both the individual body and kin relations in Pakistan’s identity database. It will follow how the limits of biometrics, not just their affordances, shape digital identification.

Paper long abstract:

The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) oversees Pakistan’s biometric-based national identity database, one of the largest of its kind in the world. The database records Pakistani citizens' biometric data and personal biographical information such as name, age and address, while also linking citizens to their next of kin. Mapping kinship networks fulfills a central identification function for the database: NADRA identifies individuals through their relations with others.

This paper will examine the role of biometric data in mediating kin relations, particularly for evidencing relatedness at the NADRA Identity Registration Center. It will focus on how family member’s biometric prints are used to authenticate the identity of their relations during the identity registration process. According to NADRA protocols, if a next of kin is already registered in the database, they can accompany a new citizen-applicant to their registration center and “vouch” for their relation through a form of biometric attestation. In this paper, I will explore how biometrics accompany and occasionally supplant conventional modes of bureaucratic attestation through emergent practices of identification.

Simultaneously, I attend to how NADRA’s mode of instrumentalizing kin relatedness can allow us to consider the limits of biometric technology. The use of kinship reveals how biometrics, and by extension the individual body, only partially fulfill NADRA’s surveillance logic. Through an ethnographic focus on bureaucratic practices at NADRA’s Identity Registration Center in Islamabad, I will follow how the limitations of biometrics, as opposed to their affordances alone, inform the digital infrastructures they are embedded within.