From ‘Terrorising the Other' to Securitising All The Turn towards Coercive Identity Management

The management of individuals and their physical and digital identities has become vital to contemporary security and border governance. In targeting a certain set of ‘unsafe’ individuals deemed to pose a threat to national security, states’ multi-layered counter-terrorism toolkits have enabled a downward recalibration of the rights of these individuals; a recalibration that has since become both palatable and entrenched. With the ever increasing reliance on new and emerging digital solutions to existing and perceived future security risks, individual physical identities have been gradually translated into, arguably narrower, digital identities. As a corollary, the recalibration has not only shifted further downward but now impacts a much larger set of individuals depending on national and international political priorities.