Keeping race at bay: familial DNA research, the ‘Turkish Community,’ and the pragmatics of multiple collectives in investigative practice

Abstract

In this contribution, we analyze the recently adjudicated Milica van Doorn rape and murder case. In this case, committed in 1992, no suspect could be identified until investigatory actors employed familial DNA searching in 2017. Crucially, familial DNA typing raised the possibility of ethnic and racial stereotyping and profiling, particularly against the background of the first case in which familial DNA typing was used in the Netherlands: the Marianne Vaatstra case, which from the start had been marred by controversy about the ethnicity of the unknown perpetrator. In our analysis, we show how criminal justice actors managed this potential for racialization through strategically mobilizing and carefully managing multiple collectives. Drawing on the notions of multiplicity and non-coherence, we show we do not only empirically trace the situated ethics and pragmatics of familial DNA research in this specific case, but we also develop a theoretical argument on the multiple and non-coherent character of race itself and its attendant ethical, political, and methodological possibilities and obligations.

The politics of face and the trouble with race: Exploring relations at the interface between the individual and the collective in forensic practice

“…This involves a biologization of appearance and, given the context in which these technologies are used, a biologization of race at both the molecular and the surface level. For instance, familial DNA searching and ancestry searching in forensic genetics are emerging as crucial investigatory instruments for police actors (Jong & M’charek, 2018; M’charek, 2020; Van Oorschot & M’charek, 2021, 2022). In such cases, genetically produced collectives are typically brought into relation with everyday categorizations of externally visible characteristics (e.g.…”

“…In such cases, genetically produced collectives are typically brought into relation with everyday categorizations of externally visible characteristics (e.g. ‘European’, ‘white’, ‘Turkish’), bringing about the possibility for further racialization of crime and marginalized communities (Van Oorschot & M’charek, 2021, 2022). Genetic forensics, then, powerfully informs not only the police search for an individual suspect, but also has the capacity to co-shape broader imaginaries of belonging, descent, and deviance.…”