Politics of (Non)Belonging: Enacting Imaginaries of Affected Publics Through Forensic Genetic Technologies

This chapter examines the profound social, ethical and political implications of the use of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) technologies in Germany, a nation whose collective memory regarding genetics is still influenced by memories of its Nazi past and of how science was used in racialising genetics and the eugenics movement. Germany’s past has contributed to a strong sense of privacy regarding genetics and a general suspicion about state players accessing sensitive genetic information. Germany, therefore, offers a political-cultural context in which various stakeholders have a deep-seated awareness of the risks of racial discrimination, and where diverse safeguards are urgently needed to achieve acceptable and accountable technologies. Controversies remain due to unease concerning racialised legacies, and fears of aggravating racial bias in an effort to fix it. The author argues that, quite clearly from its history of race science and eugenics, particularly in the 20th century, to the criminalisation of migrants after the 2015 summer of migration in the 21st century, various discriminatory systems in different eras have produced and reproduced social divisions and inequalities, producing wider ecologies for the politics of belonging and non-belonging.

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Written by Nina Amelung