“Debordering” public health: the changing patterns of health border in modern Europe

Abstract

According to David Fidler, the governance of infectious diseases evolved from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century as a series of institutional arrangements: the International Sanitary Regulations (non-interference and disease control at borders), the World Health Organization vertical programs (malaria and smallpox eradication campaigns), and a post-Westphalian regime standing beyond state-centrism and national interest. But can international public health be reduced to such a Westphalian image? We scrutinize three strategies that brought health borders into prominence: pre-empting weak states (eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century); preventing the spread of disease through nation-building (Macedonian public health system in the 1920s); and debordering the fight against epidemics (1920-1921 Russian-Polish war and the Warsaw 1922 Sanitary Conference).

COVID‐19 and the Meaning of Crisis

“…Quarantining, health screening and the issuing of health certificates, as well as establishing sanitary/military posts, were used by competing imperial powers to define and police borders and to justify encroachment on foreign territories. The policing of Muslim pilgrims during a cholera epidemic, for example, became part of the ‘Eastern question’ as the Ottoman empire, seen as the ‘sick man of Europe’, was unable to ensure the health and safety of the citizens within its borders which the imperial powers regarded as legitimizing infiltration of its territories (Zylberman, 2020). Colonial medicine and medical policing also contributed to disciplining native populations, justifying the rhetoric of ‘civilizing missions’ and undermining struggles for freedom and independence.…”