As COVID-19 and its variants spread across Australia at differing paces and intensity, the country’s response to the risk of infection and contagion revealed an intensification of bordering practices as a form of risk mitigation with disparate impacts on different segments of the Australian community. Australia’s international border was closed for both inbound and outbound travel, with few exceptions, while states and territories, Indigenous communities, and local government areas were subject to a patchwork of varying restrictions. By focusing on borders at various levels, our research traces how the logics of medico-legal bordering have filtered down from the international to the intra-national, and indeed, into hyper-local spaces. This is not just apparent in the COVID-19 moment but in previous pandemics of 1918 to 1919 influenza and smallpox, in which practices of quarantine and lockdowns were both unevenly distributed and implemented on multiple scales of social organization. An interdisciplinary approach between history and law reveals that human movement during pandemic times in Australia has been regulated in a manner that sees mobility as a risk to public health capable of mitigation through the strict enforcement of borders as a technology of both confinement and exclusion.

随着 COVID-19 及其变种以不同的速度和强度在澳大利亚传播，该国对感染和传染风险的反应表明，边境做法作为一种风险缓解形式的强化，对澳大利亚社区的不同群体产生了不同的影响。澳大利亚的国际边境对入境和出境旅行均关闭，几乎没有例外，而各州和领地、原住民社区和地方政府地区则受到各种不同限制的影响。通过关注不同层面的边界，我们的研究追踪了医学法律边界的逻辑如何从国际渗透到国内，甚至渗透到超本地空间。这不仅在 COVID-19 时期很明显，而且在 1918 年至 1919 年的流感和天花等大流行中也很明显，当时隔离和封锁的做法分布不均，并在多个社会组织规模上实施。历史与法律之间的跨学科方法表明，澳大利亚在大流行期间的人类流动受到了监管，这种方式将流动性视为对公共健康的风险，可以通过严格执行边界作为限制和排斥技术来缓解风险。