Public health in/as ‘national security’: tuberculosis and the contemporary regime of border control in Australia

Abstract

Surveillance has always been intricately connected to both the theory and practice of public health. The salience of epidemiologic method, particularly the enumeration of ‘risk factors’ and the interpolation of different population ‘groups’, underscores this reality. However, in the post 9/11 era, there has been a conflation between public health and ‘national security’ concerns. Consequently, border control, imagined as a frontier where the two most readily connect, now co-opts public health concerns, for instance ‘threats’ to legitimate specific forms of securitisation, including the case of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. In this paper, we highlight the manner in which the Australian border control regime functions as a technology of surveillance in relation to the ‘threat’ of TB and the effects it both produces for individuals and affected communities. Specifically, we highlight how spectacles enacted in the name of border control need to be carefully attended to, lest they ultimately serve to undermine the goals of public health itself.

Keywords:

• tuberculosis
• surveillance
• migration