Geographies of biosecurity: Racialized vulnerability, colonial extraction, and a new critical consciousness

The current era of emerging infectious disease demands an elaboration of critical geography's approach to biosecurity. We argue for further engagement with historicizations of empire to tease out the racialized, colonial, and class structures that create biosecurity crises and solutions. We suggest that work in political economy and critical surveillance studies offers ways to untangle the processes of racial capitalism, extraction, and racial imprinting that create multi-scalar vulnerability in the first instance. By shifting analyses to those marginalized by dominant biosecurity mechanisms, we develop a critical biosecurity consciousness that provides a positive conception of justice.