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Free keywords:
database, failure, migration control, state surveillance, West Germany
Abstract:
Surveillance studies have long argued that electronic databases are designed to maximize state surveillance as a “super-
panopticon” or “surveillant assemblage.” But how are databases being implemented in practice, and do they actually enhance
control? This article addresses these questions by examining the case of the German Central Foreigners Register
(Ausländerzentralregister [AZR]). Established in 1953, the AZR was one of the rst databases on migrants in the western lib-
eral world, and remains a pillar of Germany’s migration control system today. By analyzing internal ministerial records from
the 1950s to the 1970s – the time when this database was introduced, expanded, and automatized while still relatively free
from legal or public constraints – this article examines whether, or how, databases enhance state control. I argue that the AZR
did not provide the “perfect surveillance” it was intended to deliver; rather, it produced major bureaucratic and political chal-
lenges and a series of malfunctions. This case study conrms that database surveillance, such as the German AZR in the 1970s
and European databases today, depends on three basic conditions: shared expectations regarding data usages, cooperation in
data supply, and capacities of data storage and maintenance. Moreover, databases serve the additional symbolic function of
reassuring the self-imagination of sovereign, modern state power.
