Security as Simulacra: Surveilling gendered bodies and constructing security out of computation

Abstract

Student #: 60106041 Abstract Artificial Intelligence has become ubiquitous across the field of security and defence, especially in applications alongside surveillance. In this Dissertation I interrogate the question of how, through application and out of discourse AI impacts the securitization of Muslim women's veiling practices within the EU. I argue that the discourse constructed around the use of AI, through official documents written and commissioned by the various EU bodies, forms a cohesive body. Using discourse analysis, I trace the patterns throughout the documents and connect them to manifestations in rhetoric on the wearing of veils in public at the EU institutional level. Through this method, I conclude that the discourses of AI surveillance manifest in the way laws are applied to women who wear Islamic veils, and their identification as a security threat to Europe as a both a political and conceptual unit. Furthermore, finding that the discourses of security and science intermingle to form a rigid notion of risk which further corners women who are already marginalized by European security frameworks.