The politics of securing borders and the identities of disease

Abstract

This article compares the policies adopted by Britain, France and Germany to cope with health threats thought to be posed by entrants and migrants and explains why these governments screened at their borders for tuberculosis but not for human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). In order to understand these outcomes, we must recognise that diseases acquire durable identities, conditioned by collective imaginaries and institutional contexts when they first come to attention, which bias subsequent decisions, notably about how to balance the value of mandatory testing against the rights of the individual. © 2013 The Author. Sociology of Health & Illness © 2013 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.