Less than Human? Diaspora, Disease and the Question of Citizenship

Abstract

The aim of this special edition of International Migration is to bring about discussion between those conducting research in Diaspora Studies and the Anthropology of Public Health and Medicine. Historically, international migration has been associated with the transport of disease. Regardless of the evidence, metaphors of plague, and infection have circulated and been used to marginalise and keep out diaspora communities in host countries in an effort to 'exclude filth'. Migrants have been referred to in terms such as the 'Asiatic menace' indicating a virus-like threat to local populations. We look at the impact the traces of these images have on current host nations' perceptions of diaspora communities and also ask what impact does this have on the diasporic communities' self-perceptions, if any? Does this affect conceptions of belonging, or feed into continuing dialogues of displacement? The movement of people has long been associated with the spread of disease and infections. In light of this, we are concerned with the role of medical knowledge and practices in relation to diaspora communities, and how these discourses have contributed to the perception of diaspora populations by host societies, and helped shape wider questions of belonging and citizenship. We aim to look at these questions in their historical context, both in their continuities and discontinuities, emphasising the importance of this to an understanding of current practices. Circuits of migration, and connected medical practices are taking new forms, where, on the one hand migrants are still associated with disease and pollution, but on the other migrants are also increasingly staffing the infrastructure of western public health services. At the same time, the west can no longer lay claim to 'superior' biomedical provision. These shifts signal new

Re-emergence of cholera in the Americas: Risks, susceptibility, and ecology

“…In the past, Haitians have been discriminated against due to actual or perceived disease status by both governments and the general population of other countries. [ 40 ] This attitude still persists in spite of biological and epidemiological irrelevance. Persons who travel out of Hispaniola are just as likely to be foreigners returning to their original destination, or humanitarian workers or military traveling between vulnerable disaster or conflict zones.…”

‘Madmen, womanizers, and thieves’: moral disorder and the cultural text of refugee encampment in Kenya

“…Unlike public discourses in which refugees are sometimes depicted as would-be terrorists with an anti-Kenyan political agenda, this characterizes them first and foremost as a pathologized category of humanity. ‘Even killing,’ an inspector observed with confidence, ‘is not a problem to them at all.’ 33 The prolific pathologization of refugees in the camp is hardly surprising, considering the imaginative power that disease, infection and trauma continue to have in current debates on migration (Harper and Raman 2008; Taylor 2013) and in longer colonial discourses (Vaughan 1993; Fanon 2004). Pupavac notes that deterministic traits are embedded in humanitarian operational cultures and ‘[construct] war-affected populations as traumatized and subject to psychosocial dysfunctionalism’ (2002: 489).…”

“…'Even killing,' an inspector observed with confidence, 'is not a problem to them at all.' 33 The prolific pathologization of refugees in the camp is hardly surprising, considering the imaginative power that disease, infection and trauma continue to have in current debates on migration (Harper and Raman 2008;Taylor 2013) and in longer colonial discourses (Vaughan 1993;Fanon 2004 ' (2002: 489). Charles Bukowski distinguishes between 'ordinary madness'everyday predicaments and frustrationsand 'pathological madness', which is more existential in nature and fundamentally dislodges our being in and from the world (cited in Jackson 2008: 58;Sander 1985).…”

Book Review. No Go World

“…Andersson outlines monsters, snake merchants, wolves and other reptilian spectres. The "Wolves at our Door" chapter takes the idiom of the infected border (which has been examined elsewhere, see: Harper andRaman 2008, Markel andStern 2002) to reflect upon the construction of enemies and threats. Through examples ranging from Ellis Island, to current Mexican-American borderlands, and Libya, the author argues that riskbased bordering and fear politics draw on metaphors and logics of epidemiology and infection to portray "unwanted migrants" themselves as contagious.…”