At the border contagion, immigration, nation

Abstract

In recent publications and as an ongoing project I have been pursuing the idea that public health and infectious disease control have been part of the legal and technical constitution of 'undesirable' and prohibited entrants: an under-recognised means by which individuals and certain populations have been specifically classified and excluded from the territory and body politic of Australia. This article surveys and summarises these ideas and points to some of the recent redirections. These include a growing interest in the legacy of twentieth-century medico-legal border control on current (highly discriminating) regulations governing entry; a concern to make admissions under immigration and health law and regulation conceptually central; and the more familiar focus on race-based exclusions. Overall, my aim is to integrate the history of health and infectious disease control into the already extensive study of immigration and citizenship. Part of the effect of joint infectious disease and immigration regulation over the twentieth century has been the imagining, as well as the technical implementation of the island-nation as ostensibly secure, racially and territorially.

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