The Banopticon (sometimes written as Ban-opticon) is a term coined by Paris School academic

Didier Bigo Didier Bigo (born 31 August 1956) is a French academic from Lille and Professor of International Relations at King's College London and at Sciences Po, Paris. He has authored two books, ''Polices en réseaux. L'expérience européenne'' (1996) and ...

used within an International Political Sociology approach to security studies to describe a situation where profiling technologies are used to determine whom to place under surveillance. The term, which is a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

word consisting of ''ban'' and ''

panopticon The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be ...

'', takes its name from Michel Foucault's interpretation of the panopticon as used in ''

Discipline and Punish ''Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison'' () is a 1975 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern ...

'' and the notion of ban from

international relations International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns al ...

to describe a situation where observation is used as a disciplinary tool, namely by creating profiles for people and using databases to determine whether or not a person should be granted the right to move freely. According to Bigo, the banopticon is said to have contributed towards the securitization of migration in Europe.

References

Paris School (security) {{international-relations-stub

See also

References