The Biosurveillance State: Health Data, Borders, and Power

From nineteenth-century quarantine stations to smartphone health passes, states have long used disease to justify controlling movement. The Biosurveillance State shows how, in the twenty-first century, systems built to protect public health are being folded into broader architectures of security, border control, and digital identity. Tracing the evolution of biosurveillance across clinics, airports, refugee camps, and data centres, the book reveals how health information increasingly determines who may cross a border, access services, or retain legal status.

Rukhsar Azeemi examines electronic digital health records, biometric identifiers, outbreak monitoring tools, and emergency data-sharing regimes as interlocking infrastructures rather than isolated technologies. Drawing on debates in global health, critical security studies, and law, the book explains why governments collect health data, how it circulates between agencies, and how new forms of border control and migration management emerge from seemingly technical reforms. It scrutinises citizen scoring schemes, risk classifications, and pandemic dashboards, asking when screening becomes exclusion and when temporary emergency powers quietly become permanent.

Written in an accessible yet rigorous style, The Biosurveillance State speaks to students and researchers in public health, international relations, sociology, and law, as well as practitioners grappling with data-intensive policy. General readers concerned about surveillance, inequality, and the future of mobility will find a guide to navigating confusing technical and legal debates. By the end of the book, readers will be able to recognise recurring patterns in proposals for new health-security systems, assess who benefits and who bears the risks, and articulate principles for infrastructures that protect collective health without surrendering democratic oversight or human dignity.