This article explores medical assessments of the age of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Denmark, to show how, through the medical and bureaucratic aspects of the process, it serves as an imperialist technology of control, as those judged under 18 have greater protection in the asylum system. Since the biggest group of people who are age-estimated in Denmark are Afghans, the author looks at the relationship between Denmark and Afghanistan and draws on interviews with people who underwent the process. By connecting medical documents with biometric measurement in colonial contexts and the current expansion of biometric surveillance, the author argues that the collection of intrusive physical data from Afghan minors is to be understood as a colonial mapping of the body. The Danish Immigration Service’s age decision-making process articulates a form of administrative rule that works to depoliticise questions of dispossession and death, and is a form of colonial violence enabled by humanitarian discourse and law.

中文翻译：

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生物识别作为帝国主义：丹麦年轻寻求庇护者的年龄评估

本文探讨了对在丹麦寻求庇护的无人陪伴的未成年人年龄的医学评估，以表明它如何通过该过程的医疗和官僚方面，作为一种帝国主义的控制技术，因为 18 岁以下的人在庇护中得到了更大的保护系统。由于在丹麦接受年龄估计的人数最多的是阿富汗人，因此作者着眼于丹麦和阿富汗之间的关系，并借鉴了对经历过这一过程的人的采访。通过将殖民背景下的医疗文件与生物特征测量以及当前生物特征监测的扩展联系起来，作者认为，从阿富汗未成年人那里收集侵入性身体数据应被理解为对身体的殖民测绘。