Compulsory Testing Beyond Care: Medical Intervention as Part of the Deportation Regime
Location:
Online
Date/time
Tue 1 December 2026
13:00-14:00
About the event
Compulsory care is highly regulated in Sweden; however, the legal framework controlling compulsory care is undergoing significant changes. Historically, such interventions have been justified by concerns for the patient’s health, the protection of others, or immediate risks to life and health. Recent legislative proposals, however, signal a significant shift in the rationale underpinning compulsory care. A state inquiry (SOU 2024:80) proposes mandatory blood sampling and other bodily interventions to facilitate the enforcement of deportation decisions. If implemented, these measures would establish a new form of compulsory medical intervention linked to migration control, making bodily autonomy and the right to refuse treatment contingent on legal status. This paper examines the implications of introducing compulsory medical interventions as a mechanism of deportation enforcement. Through qualitative interviews with physicians, the paper investigates how healthcare practices become integrated into migration control. By analysing the intersection of healthcare and migration governance, the paper contributes to debates on medical ethics and bordering practices.
About the speaker
Signe Askersjö is a postdoctoral researcher within Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society at the Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the School of Global Studies at the same university. Her research examines how solidarity, boundary making, and migration shape everyday life in Sweden. She investigates how ideas of difference and similarity are produced and challenged in public discourse, politics, and ordinary encounters, and explores how borders are enacted in daily interactions. Across her work, she has focused on how people form solidarities, relationships, and understandings of one another, and on the alternative narratives that emerge when the complexity of everyday life is taken seriously. She teaches on the areas of migration, identity, and power relations, as well as anthropological methods and broader migration-related questions.
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