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oapen-20.500.12657-496212021-06-19T00:57:15Z Chapter 9 ‘Suspect’ screening Bivins, Roberta medical borders; racialised migrants; health controls; medical inspection; United Kingdom; Commonwealth; migration; National Health Service; medical surveillance bic Book Industry Communication::P Mathematics & science::PS Biology, life sciences::PSX Human biology::PSXM Medical anthropology bic Book Industry Communication::M Medicine::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JH Sociology & anthropology::JHM Anthropology::JHMC Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JF Society & culture: general::JFF Social issues & processes::JFFN Migration, immigration & emigration Like their peers across western Europe, Australia and the Americas, large segments of the British public and a significant proportion of Britain’s medical establishment have enthusiastically promoted medical screening (and de facto medical selection) of would-be migrants since World War II. Moreover, from 1962, British law explicitly empowered medical inspection and the exclusion of migrants on health grounds at all three of Britain’s idiosyncratic ‘medical borders’: during entry clearance procedures in their countries of origin; at Britain’s ports and airports; and via public health surveillance in the British towns and cities that were the migrants’ destinations. However, Britain’s geographical and internal borders were largely unmedicalised in the twentieth century and remain comparatively free from specifically medical controls even today. I explore the role of the National Health Service – both as a national symbol and as a physical institution – in shaping and responding to this paradox. Given the intensity of popular suspicions of migrants’ bodies and their hygienic and reproductive practices, and the frequency with which medical claims mediated and bolstered anti-migrant rhetoric, why has medical ‘control’ itself proven politically elusive and persistently suspect? 2021-06-18T13:55:04Z 2021-06-18T13:55:04Z 2021 chapter https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/49621 eng Rethinking borders application/pdf Attribution 4.0 International 9781526154675_ch9.pdf www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526154668 Manchester University Press Medicalising borders 6110b9b4-ba84-42ad-a0d8-f8d877957cdd 7dee4ac4-417a-4be6-8abf-3788ba3074f0 d859fbd3-d884-4090-a0ec-baf821c9abfd Wellcome 29 Manchester 104837/Z/14/Z Wellcome Trust Wellcome open access
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Like their peers across western Europe, Australia and the Americas, large segments of the British public and a significant proportion of Britain’s medical establishment have enthusiastically promoted medical screening (and de facto medical selection) of would-be migrants since World War II. Moreover, from 1962, British law explicitly empowered medical inspection and the exclusion of migrants on health grounds at all three of Britain’s idiosyncratic ‘medical borders’: during entry clearance procedures in their countries of origin; at Britain’s ports and airports; and via public health surveillance in the British towns and cities that were the migrants’ destinations. However, Britain’s geographical and internal borders were largely unmedicalised in the twentieth century and remain comparatively free from specifically medical controls even today. I explore the role of the National Health Service – both as a national symbol and as a physical institution – in shaping and responding to this paradox. Given the intensity of popular suspicions of migrants’ bodies and their hygienic and reproductive practices, and the frequency with which medical claims mediated and bolstered anti-migrant rhetoric, why has medical ‘control’ itself proven politically elusive and persistently suspect?
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