Paper short abstract:

The quarantine camp works as a mixed medical and military form of nationalizing borderwork against a threatening outside. In this paper focus is on how medical control was performed when former concentration camp prisoners were received in Sweden in 1945 at the end of World War II.

Paper long abstract:

During World War II Sweden, as a neutral country, hosted a great number of refugees. The country had more than one hundred refugee camps within its borders during this time. These camps were different in size and function. Some were relatively open and housed refugees from occupied neighborhood countries such as Denmark and Norway. Others were more closed and kept individuals who for different reasons were suspected to be a threat against society. A specific type of camp was the quarantines that in the end of the war were situated close to big harbors on the national border and operated as a security measurement against the possible spread of infectious diseases such as typhus, diphtheria, and tuberculosis. In spring and summer 1945 former concentration camp prisoners were e.g. placed in quarantine camps for a number of weeks in this way before they continued to more permanent camps in the inland of Sweden. Characteristic for these quarantines was the medical control of each step that the former prisoners took on Swedish soil, the testing of the individuals for different diseases and infections, and the spatial and social isolation of the refugees from the rest of society. In this paper I want to focus on the quarantine camps as a form of biopolitical management and health securitization of the national border.