Developed in Britain and the United States in the 1980s, genetic profiling has since become a global technology. Today, it is widely regarded as the evidentiary “gold standard” in individual and forensic identification. However, its origins as a technology of post-empire at Britain’s externalized borders in South Asia have remained unexamined. This article will argue that the first state-sanctioned use of “DNA fingerprints,” a pilot program exploring its value in disputed cases of family reunification migration from Bangladesh and Pakistan to Britain’s postcolonial cities, repays closer examination. National and transnational responses to the advent of genetic profiling as an identification technology demonstrate the interplay between imperial and postcolonial models and networks of power and truth production. At the same time, this experiment prefigured and conditioned the wider reception of DNA profiling in matters of kinship. Far from being a footnote, the use of genetic profiling by migrants determined to exercise their legal rights in the face of a hostile state also worked to naturalize genetic ties as the markers of “true” familial relationships.

基因分析于 20 世纪 80 年代在英国和美国开发，此后已成为一项全球性技术。今天，它被广泛认为是个人和法医鉴定的证据“黄金标准”。然而，它作为英国在南亚外部化边界的后帝国技术的起源仍未得到检验。本文将论证，国家批准首次使用“DNA 指纹”，这是一项探索其在从孟加拉国和巴基斯坦到英国后殖民城市的家庭团聚移民争议案件中的价值的试点项目，值得仔细研究。国家和跨国界对基因分析作为一种身份识别技术的出现的反应表明了帝国和后殖民模式以及权力和真相生产网络之间的相互作用。同时，这个实验预示并制约了在亲属关系问题上更广泛地接受 DNA 分析。决心在面对敌对国家时行使其合法权利的移民使用基因分析绝非脚注，这也有助于将基因联系归化为“真正”家庭关系的标志。