Philosophical and ethical aspects
The philosophical part of the project aims to specify the ethical principles relevant for DNA analysis for family reunification, and to analyze the moral problems and philosophical contradictions underlying this practice. The ethical approach to DNA analysis in the context of immigration policies will focus on the notion of family and the meaning of identity, both of which are closely related to the right to (genetic) privacy and (informational) self-determination.
Privacy Issues
When it comes to governmental interference in family affairs and genetic data, “genetic privacy” should be given special attention. Caution is advised not only because genetic privacy is closely related to personal identity but also because the right to privacy concerning information on DNA is, according to some authors, the basis of one’s self-understanding as a free and equal being, which again is the basis of democracy.
Given this background, DNA analysis for family reunification is especially problematic as here extremely sensitive data is collected, handled and stored - not in a medical context, where strict ethical frameworks and professional ethics are in place to prevent misuse, but in an unregulated administrative or even commercial context. Additionally, the practice of storing genetic material or genetic information for not clearly specified further uses is at odds with the principle of informed consent fundamental in the medical context. The double standard thus created in the treatment of personal data of immigrants and residents can hardly be justified by the legitimate right and political interest of the state in preventing illegal immigration, including human trafficking. So the ethical question arises of how these two moral goods conflicting in the practice of DNA analysis for family reunification can be balanced. How does the notion and the scope of genetic privacy relate to individual autonomy and democratic principles? How do biological facts interact with citizenship rights? How can interference in genetic privacy – and the right not to know about genetic features – be justified and by what principles?
The concept of family
A key question for the project will be how to evaluate the apparent geneticization of both individuals and family relations resulting from the practice of DNA testing for family reunification. On the one hand, this practice reduces family to its traditional function: procreation. (Married) partners can prove to be “truly” related only through their biological offspring, which thus becomes the “material proof of their conjugal love”, a notion reechoing and performatively naturalizing the traditional Christian definition of marriage. On the other hand, the geneticization of family resulting from this practice could be seen as an integral part of a more general biologisation of human relations also visible in the emergence of consumer genomics and forms of “biological citizenship” or “genetic citizenship”. However, in the context of DNA analysis for family reunification the notion of “biological citizenship” reveals an unexpected new aspect. While in the existing literature the idea of “biological citizenship” often stresses the democratic, anti-authoritarian and counter-hegemonic potential of this process, DNA analysis for family reunification more closely resembles the old-fashioned practice of “subjectivation”, meaning not self-governance but domination, as here it is again the “sovereign power” which defines the immigrant family as “bare life” linking legal claims to biological facts.
There is a further dimension that has to be explored. The implicit preconception of family underlying this practice is that of the nuclear family composed of a heterosexual couple of parents and their biological children, a model which even in Europe was established only in the 18th century and is losing more and more ground in a period when patchwork families and homosexual partnerships are widely accepted. By reducing the immigrant family to biological ties, the practice of DNA analysis for family reunification promotes and stabilises the patriarchal nuclear family and the connected traditional gender roles criticised not only by feminists, but also by most of the western countries performing DNA analysis for family reunification when it comes to the condition of women in many of the immigrant cultures.
