Race, Immigration and Health: The Hostile Environment and Public Health Responses to Covid-19

This paper examines the impact of governmental management of the pandemic on the morbidity and mortality of migrants, gendered and racialised groups by focussing on the relation of its public health message campaign to accommodation, health and survival. The Hostile Environment immigration policies have restricted the ability of these groups to adhere to Government’s public health guidelines, increasing risks of their contracting coronavirus. These policies exacerbate existing health inequalities in intersectional ways. The Covid virus, in its socially reproductive capacity, can thus be understood as a biological descriptor for a political crisis of intersectional inequality in the politics of health.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial Studies on 22/02/2021, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01419870.2021.1881578.