Paper short abstract:

Based on three case studies, the paper develops an argument to extend immunity beyond individual bodies, shedding light to the politics of how vaccines come to be and who benefits from them.

Paper long abstract:

Global COVID vaccine gaps have made explicit that the access is framed by nationalism and capitalism of vaccine research and development: pharmaceutical companies that develop vaccines, exclusive patent regulations that protect industry profits, and proprietary and non-public pre-purchase contracts between countries and companies. The structures are repeated across various new vaccines, albeit in different shapes depending on the socio-political context.

By bringing attention to the phases preceding vaccine roll out, namely the research and development of vaccines, this paper analyses the political economic structures that shape immunity-to-be. Given that commercial actors dominate the field of vaccine development, a relational approach to immunity needs to shed light on the production process of vaccines and the political economic regimes of scientific knowledge production and immunological research. In this paper I argue that the unjust division of vaccine access is nothing short of necropolitics, the use of social and political power by rich countries dictating how some may live and some must die (Mbembe 2020). Based on three case studies: COVID-19 vaccine intellectual property right struggles of early 2021, racialized recruitment discourses of an international bacterial vaccine clinical trial conducted between Finland and West Africa in 2018-2020, and a controversial HPV vaccine deployment pilot study during which seven girls died in India in 2011, the paper develops an argument to extend immunity beyond individual bodies, shedding light to the politics of how vaccines come to be and who benefits from them.