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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Canada’s failed use of DTC genetic genealogy testing to facilitate the deportation of detained migrants, arguing that privacy-focused critiques obscure the scientific limits of genetic identity claims, thus enabling the expansion of other forms of biometric surveillance.

Paper long abstract

In 2023, the Privacy Commissioner ruled that the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) had violated the Privacy Act by submitting DNA samples from detained migrants to Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic platforms to establish identity and facilitate deportation. Although the initiative was deemed unlawful, regulators later framed the case as a governance “lesson” on how biometric data might be processed more compliantly in the future.

This paper examines the failed use of DTC genetic testing as a biometric identification technology within migration governance. It argues that failures do not necessarily undermine contested identification technologies, but rather, can legitimize future policy interventions. Drawing on the concept of strategic ignorance (McGoey 2015), I analyze how forms of ignorance are leveraged in the production and stabilization of digital identity regimes.

DTC genetic genealogy platforms transform biological samples into classifications of ancestry and race, promising ‘objective’, data-driven insights about identity and belonging. Within migration governance, this evidence has been mobilized as substitutes for documentation or testimony, extending forms of biometric surveillance embedded in immigration processes, despite the fact that geneticists have repeatedly challenged the validity of inferring nationality or identity from genetic data.

Drawing on strategic ignorance, I argue that the failed use of genetic genealogy testing by the CBSA exposes the political and epistemic fragility of ‘authoritative’ and ‘scientific’ classifications of identity central to migration management. Further, critiques of DTC genetic testing serve to legitimize it’s use by centering issues of privacy, thus obscuring the fundamental inadequacy of genetic genealogy as a proxy for identity.