Reframing the ‘securitization of public health’: a critical race perspective on post-9/11 bioterrorism preparedness in the US

Abstract

This paper builds on the work of critical health scholars and practitioners who have examined the ‘securitization’ of public health in the US during the post-9/11 period. Adopting a critical race perspective, I delve more deeply into the racialized dimensions of this securitization, analyzing how the emergence of a bioterror-framed view of disease has mobilized a disease-terror imaginary comprised of longstanding suspicion towards bodies of color coupled with more recent anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment. I demonstrate that the incorporation of the central figure of this imaginary – the bioterrorist – into US public health discourse has reconfigured ideas about disease carriers as potentially violent and malicious, in turn reconfiguring approaches to disease control that rely on suspicion and securitized health surveillance. US public health adoption of this orientation towards disease control has, I argue, the potential to exacerbate targeting, stigma, and exclusionary practices towards individuals and populations deemed suspicious vis-à-vis this imaginary. My work, in examining the racial discourses of bioterror that shape ‘securitization’, aims to expand the analytical tools that US public health administrators and practitioners draw on to remain vigilant in ensuring that it serves all of its publics in an equitable manner.