314 R. Vecellio Segate around what technical standards to adopt, and who should select them, as well as on what the role of “introducers” could be, towards the digital onboarding of individuals experiencing “borderline” configurations of citizenship are entirely neglected in socio-legal and security scholarship alike. Complemented with concrete policy proposals, the present work accepts the ambition to start bridging this gap. Keywords: technical standards in biometrics; borderline citizenship; identity introducer; migrations; nomadism, displacement, statelessness, and refuge; remote identity onboarding 1 Introduction Unlawful, quasi-lawful, unregulated, unofficial, unrecorded, or in any way “borderline” migratory patterns seem to stage the perfect case-study for remote identity onboarding applications today. The “remote” component is essential when people are on the move, all the more so if they move through unofficial and perhaps even unlawful channels: when an asylum seeker flees from persecution, they1 might need to keep hiding from the pushing2 country’s state authorities; and when escaping “natural” disasters or climate threats, including upcoming conflicts for resources, they might be moving swiftly to escape those (Vecellio Segate 2022a). What is more, individuals in these situations might dislike the idea of having their data collected for governmental or para-governmental purposes – at least in the short run, that is, until they have reached a destination they consider safe, or the political regime they escape from has stipulated credible safeguards for them and their families. In fact, conceptually, the XXI century has come a long way in identity management, with the normalisation of securitised borders becoming arguably the most characteristic trait of public order today. Throughout thousands of years of civilisation, humans have always been able to potentially relocate around the planet at will, either because there were no formal political borders at all, or because borders were not enforceable, and even when they were enforced, they proved porous and changed quite frequently. One way or the other, until the advent of satellites, facial recognition, radars, algorithms, and other technologies, borders’ formal enforcement was fraught with blind spots, turnarounds, and exceptions. This is no longer the 1 One could use “he” for reasons of practicality: it would accurately reflect the on-the-ground reality, with the overwhelming majority of cross-border migrants being (young) men. They tend to send remittances back to their families, and reunite (mostly lawfully) at a later stage in the destination country. 2 In international migration law and especially international refugee law, the “pushing country” is a migrant’s country of origin, while the “pulling country” is their destination country.