Paper short abstract:

Little is known about the nature of everyday “data work” needed to sustain information systems. Through “tinkering” with publicly available information, digital traces of data work are found, culminating in a visual and textual analysis. The opacity of these work practices can thus be disturbed.

Paper long abstract:

In Critical Security Studies, STS concepts and methods are frequently mobilised to trace the making of the European Union’s security architectures. This has led scholars to attend to the practices of actors traditionally “invisible” in these systems. The ubiquity of data in European sociotechnical security practices has been acknowledged. However, less is known about the sites and nature of everyday “data work” and its productive role in European security infrastructures. Data work can be explored as referring to the tasks related to the production, structuring and/or control of data for a given purpose. Given the opacity of these sociotechnical environments in security contexts; this paper engages with “tinkering” as an experimental methodological practice. To substantiate the nature and sites of “data work” in European security, attention is paid to the profiles, labels, and nomenclatures of data workers across member states. Descriptive terms and roles that describe those who are drawn into working on the European Passenger Name Record and Advance Passenger Information systems are collated. “Data workers” profiles in terms of role descriptors and regulatory documents are traced. These are taken as digital traces found through publicly available information and used to generate textual data. To explore this textual data, we will use digital methodologies stemming from media studies and social sciences to spark reflection on the visible “data work” sustaining large scale information systems. This scoping can shed light on the frictions that characterise the unfolding of European security infrastructures through a focus on the heterogeneity of data work.