Discourses on im/migrants, ethnic minorities, and infectious disease: Fifty years of tuberculosis reporting in the United Kingdom

Ethnicity and im/migrant classification systems their constituent categories have a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis United Kingdom. This article critically examines employed epidemiological discourses TB, im/migrants, ethnic minorities reporting between 1965 2015. We employ Sociology Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis trace continuities changes used discursive minorities, TB. These disjunctures are analysed within socio-historical context demonstrate historical contingency production. outline two phases construction. The first coincides with period decolonisation, which witnessed change identity ascriptions from ‘immigrants’ ‘ethnic groups’ as ‘other’. second commenced after 1991, when adoption census ethnicity standard collection population statistics entrenched reporting. argue discourse reveals that ‘new’ exhibits ‘old’ by targeting immigrant ‘other’ through biosecuritisation practices. contend these originated postcolonial paradigm increasing immigration new forms mobility creating preconditions for implications current collaborative TB strategy.