Suspect Families: DNA Analysis, Family Reunification and Immigration Policies

Suspect Families is the first book to investigate the social, political, and ethical implications of parental testing for family reunification in immigration cases. Drawing on policy documents, legal frameworks, case study material and interviews with representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisation and immigration authorities, immigration lawyers, geneticists and applicants for family reunification, the book analyses the different political regimes and social arrangements in which DNA analysis is adopted for decision-making on family reunification in three distinct European countries: Austria, Finland and Germany. Interdisciplinary in scope, the book reconstructs the processes, institutional logic and the political and administrative practices of DNA testing from a comparative perspective, combining theoretical conceptualisation with detailed empirical work to explore the central societal, political and ethical issues raised by the use of DNA profiling in the context of immigration policy. A ground-breaking study of the role played by new technologies in migration decisions, Suspect Families will appeal to scholars of sociology, political science, science and technology studies and surveillance studies.

Torsten Heinemann is Professor of Sociology with a focus on Social Problems and Social Control in the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, and Associate Senior Research Fellow in the Biotechnologies, Nature and Society Research Group in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.

Ilpo Helén is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu and Kuopio, and a docent of sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

Thomas Lemke is Professor of Sociology with a focus on Biotechnologies, Nature and Society in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. He is the author of Perspectives on Genetic Discrimination, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction, and Foucault, Governmentality and Critique, and co-editor of Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges.

Ursula Naue is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Vienna in Austria.

Martin G. Weiss is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria and co-editor of Ethics, Society, Politics.