Latin American airspace revisited: Exploring drones as regulatory subject

The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones, as a tool for management of emergency situations, public order and of human, environmental and wildlife security in Latin America raises a host of regulatory and ethical challenges. Based on insights from the Science and technology and the socio-legal studies literatures, the article explores the logic through which drones impose themselves as regulatory subjects. For understanding that logic, we follow a four-step inquiry: a mapping of contemporary usages, interests and public concerns; a scoping of regulatory approaches; a discussion of how drones are given ‘jobs’ through the production of specific problematizations and solutions; and an argument on how airspace – as an inherently malleable concept – is particularly permeable to a variety of regulatory priorities. We argue that the Latin American drone regulatory airspace is a non-systematic reaction to a reality shaped by different actors vested with political powers of different nature.