Michelle Pfeifer presented the research at the Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) in Luxembourg in the panel "Digital Borders: Migration and Data Politics, 1950s to 2000s“ on Saturday 11 October 2025

Paper Abstract: 

Infrastructural Opportunism: Database Interoperability’s Lessons from the German Central Foreigner’s Register

Database interoperability is one of the largest concerns of European public administration and border policing. The “seamless” data flow between institutions across borders is seen as central for European integration. This data flow is supposed to provide a complete and constant picture of data across EU member states also in support of border policing and migration management. In this paper, I show that database interoperability has continuously been used by public administration as a technical and administrative solution to what is seen as the problem of “irregular” migration already before contemporary discourses about e-government, digital states, or algorithmic policing rose to prominence. Specifically, I focus on plans and implementation of data interoperability between public administration, border protection, and the police as they were articulated in the 1980s and 90s in Germany. I situate these plans as part of larger political and social concerns around anti-terrorism, (labor) migration, and the Cold War. This case shows that the relationship between the control and management of migration and policing developed alongside and informed each other. Moreover, it provides a genealogy of “smart” border policing, anti-terrorism, and securitization long before 9/11, the War on Terror, and official state projects of “smart” bordering were instituted.