Abstract

Airports are crucial channels of mobility for the global citizens of the twenty‐first century. They are points of entry and exit for tourists, business persons, workers, students and of course, for some refugees as well. The scale of operations is huge ‐ international passenger travel increased twelve‐fold in the second half of the twentieth century (Urry, 2000: 50) and the vast majority of this is accounted for in air travel. In the USA alone there are two million daily airtravelers on 20,000 flights (Gottdiener,2001: 1). Airports are ‘placeless’ sites of temporary sojourn, air‐lock chambers for nomadic executives or sun‐seekers. But they have profound social and political significance, particularly in personal data handling.