Medicalising Borders

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...
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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.