Healthy nation body, foreign viruses and border control: health bordering and biopolitics in the Polish context

This article analyses the scale of support for state actions and policies related to ‘health bordering’ in Polish society and indicates how sympathies for right-wing nationalism, higher levels of religiosity, lower levels of education and residence in rural areas may influence resistance to or acceptance of strengthening border control due to health protection and the capacity to reproduce biopolitical mechanisms restricting mobility for epidemiological reasons. The article aims to specify the social factors that strengthen the policy of health control at state borders and also support measures assuming the isolation of cities and mobility restrictions within the country in the event of threats to public health. It also indicates which means of transport were considered particularly dangerous in the context of a potential pandemic. This analysis contributes to future debates on the relationship between right-wing populism, medical populism and health bordering by demonstrating the internal diversity of populist environments and their motives for action. On the one hand, there are typical right-wing nationalist attitudes aimed at protecting the country and the ‘nation’ from external health threats. On the other side of the dispute, there are also populists, but those who, imitating Donald Trump’s nationalism, attempt to promote alt-right ideas combining libertarian slogans with an anti-systemic narrative and reject the actions of the political establishment, medical knowledge and the opinions of medical communities.