Everyday bordering, healthcare, and the politics of belonging in contemporary Britain

This chapter argues that healthcare is not only a key emerging site of everyday bordering in the UK, but also that analysis of controls in access to healthcare for migrants offers an insight into the ethics and morality of Britain’s geoeconomics. It explores the proliferation of borderwork within healthcare settings, where decisions surrounding rights to access healthcare not only impact upon individuals’ health and wellbeing but could also be life-threatening. The chapter deals with a short theoretical framing, which explores everyday bordering and belonging, before presenting an overview of immigration checks in the National Health Service. It provides a range of materials to analyse the political economy of bordering in healthcare and then its impacts. In Britain and elsewhere, everyday bordering has come to replace multiculturalism as the key technology through which states are approaching the governance of diversity. The chapter also explores the difficulties of administering the border for employees attempting to re-coup costs from overseas visitors.