Where on earth are you?

Frances Stonor Saunders on the crossing of borders

Globalisation promised a borderless world, but it has delivered an age of neurotically policed zones and cubicles. To cross a border legally now involves an unprecedented level of scrutiny: fingerprint and iris scans, chips embedded in your passport, hidden sensors to detect your heartbeat and carbon dioxide emissions from thirty feet away, the tick-box confessional of ‘Are you now or have you ever been . . .’ Frances Stonor Saunders inspects the complex apparatus of today’s border regimes and their obsession with the verified self.

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences