| Title | Selective Fencing at Denmark’s Biological, Politico-Geographical and Genomic ‘Borders’ |
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| Contributor | Mette N. Svendsen(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-30-7 |
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Publisher | Helsinki University Press |
| Published on | 2025-03-26 |
| Long abstract | This chapter tracks the regulation of the border crossings of pigs and people in and out of Denmark and makes an argument for investigating under one lens the biological, geographical and genomic margins by which the nation defines itself. I bring together pig and human unborn life, fully fledged bodies, and genomes to direct analytical attention to the governance of entangled living things. First, I examine how pig breeding and human reproductive policies regulate the biological ‘borders’ through which pigs and humans may enter the Danish nation. Second, I scrutinise how wild boar fences and human immigration policies regulate the entrance of pigs and human migrants at the Danish geographical borders. Third, I examine how scientific, political and financial investments in precision medicine shape the genomic ‘borders’, regulating the containment and movement of pig and human genomes. I argue that the regulation of these entries into Denmark performs selective fencing, in that some humans and pigs and some genomes can enter while others cannot. In this framework of belonging, the exclusion of what is seen as life-draining material at the various borders is conceptually linked to sustaining equal life opportunities and high levels of universal care for the humans already allowed inside the borders. In short, intertwined processes of selection and care are at the centre of defining the nation as economy, territory, and human–pig collectivity. |
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Mette N. Svendsen is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Her work investigates borders of human and animal life and boundaries of the nation. She is the author of Near Human: Border Zones of Life, Species, and Belong¬ing (Rutgers University Press, 2022).