Migration, contagion and nation: Imaginaries of the border in the moral panic about HIV positive migrants in Britain, 1997

本文批判了道德恐慌、常识和边界作为一种地理想象的纠缠在一起的共同产物。2014年1月，18名保守党议员试图修改移民法，以禁止艾滋病毒携带者移居英国。根据他们的提议，“移民许可”将取决于一个人“证明他们没有携带任何病毒……”的能力。规定的病原体，即乙型肝炎和艾滋病毒。他们的举动在政治领域和民间社会都引起了震惊和愤怒。泰伦斯·希金斯信托的代表黛西·埃利斯指出，如果修正案获得通过，它“将是迄今为止这个国家对艾滋病毒感染者实施的最严厉的政策”。因此，人们对该修正案的反应是建立在一种困惑和惊愕的感觉上——埃利斯说，这是一个令人震惊的“大转变”，“将把英国的艾滋病政策带入一个新的黑暗时代”。在那些反对该提案的人当中，普遍的理解是，这一举动完全违背了政治和公众对艾滋病毒的共识。随后修正案的失败只是强化了这种历史偏差的叙述。相比之下，这项提议是在这样一种信念下运作的：这一努力绝不是不合历史的，绝不是不受欢迎的。这里的论点是，2014年的修正案源于始于上世纪末的一种道德恐慌，这种恐慌在千禧年之后不受控制地发展，通过对边境的一种特定想象来表达自己，将其视为一个监视、隔离和保护的场所。这项研究的历史轨迹可以追溯到1997年发表的一系列文章，当时右翼媒体开始培养公众对艾滋病毒阳性移民在NHS寻求“昂贵”治疗的关注。这些最初的努力通过国民保健服务的可及性的化身，促进了对边界渗透性的焦虑，引发了一系列担忧，这些担忧将在接下来的五年里传播。到2003年，这种复杂的情况已经发展成为全面的道德恐慌，对医疗费用的担忧演变为对移民将艾滋病毒传染给“本地”人口的恐惧。如今，边境的渗透性体现在英国对传染病的脆弱性上，这一转变很快反映在政治领域，保守党在2005年大选前夕采取了有关艾滋病和移民的政策。迈克尔·霍华德（Michael Howard）在声明中暗示了边境的重要性：“我们需要控制进入英国的人，以确保他们不会构成公共健康风险，并保护他们获得国民保健服务（NHS）的机会。”这是常识。这种从对可及性的有限关注到对脆弱性、传染性和控制的常识的转变，是本研究的动力所在，因为它构成了2014年修正案未被承认的背景和历史背景。为了批判性地理解道德恐慌与常识的关系，以及常识与地理想象的关系，本项目试图回答以下研究问题：1。上世纪90年代末，道德恐慌最初是如何传播的？获得国民保健服务与边境的“弱点”之间的关系是如何叙述的？是什么促使人们对艾滋病毒和移民产生最初的兴趣？21世纪初的道德恐慌以何种方式重现？何时何地，对可访问性的关注变成了对脆弱性的恐慌？这种恐慌是如何通过它作为地理想象的表达而进入政治话语的？这种道德恐慌的后果是什么？它是否成功地形成了一种新的常识？这一常识如何重塑了当代的边界概念？这在那18位保守党议员的行动中表现出来了吗？

This dissertation critiques the entangled co-production of moral panic, common sense and the border as a geographical imaginary. It takes as its point of departure the attempt, in January 2014, of 18 Conservative MPs to amend the Immigration Bill so as to ban people with HIV from moving to Britain. According to their proposal, 'immigration permissions' would become dependent on a person's ability to 'demonstrate that they are not carriers of any . . . prescribed pathogens', namely Hepatitis B and HIV.1 Their move provoked shock and outrage in the political sphere and in civil society alike. Daisy Ellis, a representative of the Terrence Higgins Trust noted that, were the amendment to be passed, it 'would represent the most draconian policy enforced on people with HIV by this country to date.'2 The reaction to the amendment was thus founded in a sense of confusion and consternation - Ellis states that it was a shocking 'about-face' that 'would take UK HIV policy into an new Dark Age.' Amongst those opposed to the proposal, the general understanding was that this was a move in total contradiction to the political and popular consensus on HIV. The subsequent failure of the amendment only strengthened this narrative of a historical aberration. This proposal, in contrast, operates under the conviction that this effort was anything but ahistorical, and anything but unpopular. The thesis here is that the 2014 amendment grew out of a moral panic that began at the end of the last century, and developed unchecked beyond the millennium, articulating itself through a particular imaginary of the border as a site of surveillance, quarantine and protection. This is a study whose historical arc can be traced back to a set of articles published in 1997, when the right-wing press began to cultivate public concern around HIV-positive migrants seeking 'expensive' treatments on the NHS. These initial efforts served to foster anxiety around the permeability of the border via the avatar of the accessibility of the NHS, fomenting a complex of concerns which would propagate over the next half-decade. By 2003, this complex had grown into a full-scale moral panic, with a concern about the costs of medical care metamorphosing into a fear of migrants transmitting HIV to the 'native' population. The permeability of the border now became manifest in the nation's vulnerability to contagion, a shift soon reflected in the political sphere, withthe Conservative party adopting policies on HIV and migration in the run-up to the 2005 general election. The importance of the border is implicit in Michael Howard's declaration that: 'We need to control who is coming to Britain to ensure that they are not a public health risk and to protect access to the NHS. It's plain common sense.'3 This transition from a limited concern about accessibility to a common sense about vulnerability, contagion and control, is what animates this study, for it forms the unacknowledged context and historical backstory to the 2014 amendment. So as to arrive at a critical understanding of the relation of moral panic to common sense, and common sense to geographical imaginary, this project attempts to answer the following research questions:1. How was the moral panic first propagated in the late 1990's? How was the relation between access to the NHS and the 'weakness' of the border narrated? What drove this initial interest in HIV and migration?2. In what ways was the moral panic reproduced in the early 2000s? When and where did a concern about accessibility become a panic about vulnerability? How did this panic push itself into political discourse, through its articulation as a geographical imaginary?3. What were the ramifications of this moral panic? Did it manage to shape a new common sense? How has this common sense reshaped the contemporary conception of the border? Was this expressed in the actions of those 18 Conservative MPs?