Medicalising Borders: Selection, Containment and Quarantine Since 1800

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Foci and vectors of communicable diseases are testing the efficacy of medical control at state borders. By drawing on the interdisciplinary expertise of a network of researchers the book demonstrates that current border security regimes of Western states exhibit a high share of bio-political power techniques that originate in European modernity.

The research of pandemics, epidemics, and pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, reaches beyond biomedicine and touches the core of modern statehood, since foci and vectors of communicable diseases are testing the efficacy of medical control at state borders. By illuminating these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume starts with historical models of quarantine. It deals with fears of contamination and the corresponding stereotypes border crossers and migrants are confronted with. At state borders the latter have been subject to the implementation of medical, genetic and biometric screening techniques. The book wants to show that the contemporary border security regimes of Western states exhibit a high share of medicalised techniques of power that originate in European modernity; it draws on the expertise of a network of researchers who deal with these issues from the early eighteenth century up to recent developments.

Reviews

'Medicalizing Borders makes it abundantly clear that medicine cannot play Pontius Pilatus and wash its hands in innocence.'
Leo van Bergen, Leiden University Medical Centre, Medicine, Conflict and Survival

Author Bio

Sevasti Trubeta is a researcher at the Institute of Childhood Studies, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal

Christian Promitzer is a researcher at the Institute for History, University of Graz

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor in the History of Medicine at Oxford Brookes University