Biopolitics of public health and immigration in times of crisis: The malaria epidemic in Greece (2009–2014)

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 106; pp. 223 - 233
• Main Authors: Kotsila, Panagiota, Kallis, Giorgos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.11.2019; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Biopolitics; Crisis; Discourses; Discrimination; Disease; Ecological effects; Economic crisis; Epidemics; Eradication; Farmworkers; Human ecology; Immigrants; Immigration; Immigration policy; Malaria; Migrant workers; Otherness; Outbreaks; Power; Public health; Racism; Socioeconomic factors; Vector-borne diseases; Vulnerability; Xenophobia; Greece; Immigration; Biopolitics; Malaria; Racism; Public health; Crisis
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.08.019

•Immigrant workers were the mostly hit and most vulnerable group in the malaria outbreak in Greece (2009–2014).•This was primarily due to their socio-economic exclusion, labor conditions and exploitation.•The disease’s spread was also a result of racist public health biopolitics.•Portraying migrants as a risk for public health was capitalized politically during crisis.•The stigmatization of migrants as malaria importers disallowed the disease’s timely control. That crisis and austerity have a negative effect on public health is well documented. Less attention has been paid on the explosive combination of crisis with xenophobia and the ways racist policies and discourses produce vulnerable bodies, blamed then for their own disease. We study here the 2009 outbreak of malaria in the Evrotas region of Peloponnese, first time since the official eradication of the disease in Greece in 1974. We find that a crucial factor for the outbreak was discrimination against undocumented farm workers excluded from channels of support maintained for Greek citizens. Like Agamben’s homo sacer, the state sustains immigrant workers at a threshold of existence, initially invisible then turned into biopolitical targets, scapegoats in a public health emergency. Disease such as malaria is the result of interacting human and non-human ecologies produced in a web of power relations. As such, it can be used symbolically and with political purposes in order to enhance xenophobia and “Othering”. Racism, social vulnerability and disease, we claim, can be mutually reinforcing phenomena particularly during times of socio-economic crisis and austerity.