Sociology of health & illness
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Comparative Study
Blind spots and adverse conditions of care: screening migrants for tuberculosis in France and Germany.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease that declined significantly throughout the 20(th) century. Large-scale TB screening of entire populations in France and Germany has thus been replaced by active screening of risk-groups, particularly migrants. ⋯ I overturn the discussion about screening and surveillance of migrants as a risk-group by showing that it is not the stigmatisation of migrants through disease risk that is most at stake, but the invisibility of the most vulnerable among them in disease surveillance data and the way restrictive national immigration policies interfere with and subvert local screening and treatment practices targeting them. The aim of my article is to promote a pragmatic sociology of screening, while paying attention to the practical complexities, political conditions and medical ambivalences of screening and follow-up care, especially when the migrant groups concerned are socially, politically and medically vulnerable.