ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I shift the focus to how the border becomes materialised through administrative practices and routines, including the general practitioner scheme, the use of personal identification numbers, and the issue of payment. I show how these practices were not necessarily linked explicitly to migration and border control but to forms of control of the population in general. As such, they were not primarily about the detection of irregular migrants for deportation but excluded irregular migrants in more subtle ways, including deterring them from exercising the limited rights that they actually had. In the chapter, I also explore how healthcare providers navigate bureaucratic structures in their situated responses to the ethical and practical dilemmas raised in their encounter with irregular migrants. These situated responses did not necessarily pit formal law against informal inclusion but could be seen to operate in a grey zone opened up by ambiguities and tensions that simultaneously cut through law, policy, and practice.
