Health restores colonial and racist hierarchies: From Australian Immigration Health Requirement to Global Vaccination Passport in the COVID-19 regime

Keywords: health requirement, biotech device, migration, COVID-19, vaccination passport, Global South, Australia

Abstract

The imposition of health requirements (HR) as a biotechnopolitical device to control migration is not new; the analysis of the Australian case reveals an extensive surveillance infrastructure that relates migration, health, disability, and race, which reproduces geopolitics of (the) risk and that puts the global south at a disadvantage. In this way, the governance of migration and health is managed using the latter as a “filter that privileges” certain migrant bodies over others. At the same time, this governance has created a complex global monitoring system through computer surveillance devices that have been operating for decades in complicity with other states such as Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The objective of this study is to use the Australian case as a benchmark to analyze the possible consequences of imposing a “vaccination passport” as a global health requirement under COVID-19 regime.

Received: 10 February 2022
Accepted: 31 May 2022

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Published
2022-06-30
How to Cite
Burbano, Carla. 2022. “Health Restores Colonial and Racist Hierarchies: From Australian Immigration Health Requirement to Global Vaccination Passport in the COVID-19 Regime”. Deusto Journal of Human Rights, no. 9 (June), 133-63. https://doi.org/10.18543/djhr.2355.
Section
Articles