A Documentary History of the Immunity (or Vaccine) Passport
Health Certificates of Public Health, Personal Identity and Power from the Plague to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12210766 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marc R H Kosciejew (0000-0002-0692-8294, University of Malta, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 110-138 |
| Publication date | 2023-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social History of Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-631X • E-ISSN: 1477-4666 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/shm/hkac077 |
| OpenAlex | W4360843906 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
The immunity (or vaccine) passport of the coronavirus pandemic, as a concept and object, is not unprecedented. This health and identity document features a history spanning over half-a-millennium and appearing across diverse geopolitical and sociocultural contexts. This article presents a documentary history of the immunity passport and its heterogeneous material instantiations, uses and effects across divergent historical settings. It illuminates how the immunity passport has helped shaped identities and public health, as well as impacted individual and institutional agency, during health crises. Four historical cases are explored, including the plagues ravaging the Renaissance Mediterranean region, the 1665 Great Plague of London, the yellow fever outbreaks in the antebellum slave-era southern USA and the chronic cholera conditions confronting colonial-era British India. Although disparate, these historical cases share the immunity passport as a non-pharmaceutical intervention into their respective health crises that played important roles in people’s lives during these troubled times
Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Disease · Genealogy · Geography · Identity (music · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Pandemic · Plague (disease · Political science · Power (physics · Public health · Sociocultural evolution · Medicine · Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |