What happens when people with HIV apply to immigrate to Canada? Screening Out takes readers through the process of seeking permanent residency, illustrating how mandatory HIV testing and the medical inadmissibility regime are organized in such a way as to make such applications impossible. This ethnographic inquiry into the medico-legal and administrative practices governing the Canadian immigration system shows how this system works from the perspective of the very people toward whom this exclusionary health policy is directed.

As Laura Bisaillon demonstrates, mandatory immigration HIV screening triggers institutional practices that are highly problematic not only for would-be immigrants, but also for those bureaucrats, doctors, and lawyers who work within that system. She provides a vital corrective to state claims about the functioning of – and the professional and administrative practices supporting – mandatory HIV testing and medical examination, pinpointing how and where things need to change.

Laura Bisaillon is a political sociologist and associate professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She is the author of Screening Out: HIV Testing and the Canadian Immigration Experience (UBC Press, 2022). She is the director of the documentary film The Unmaking of Medical Inadmissibility (2020)

Laura Bisaillon's profile page

• Winner, Best Book Award, Canadian Studies Network
• Commended, <P>Canadian Sociology Book Award, Canadian Sociological Association</P>

"An excellent ethnographic account of how mandatory HIV testing has become an ominous tool for rendering permanent resident applications ‘medically inadmissible’ in the Canadian federal immigration system, leaving some people in even more precarious circumstances than where they began."

Sociology of Health & Illness

"The knowledge and insight that Screening Out provides into the previously hidden inner workings of Canadian immigration policy and practice would significantly benefit all audiences."

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

"Screening Out is a well-researched testimony that offers a voice to those who have been placed by the immigration process in a space devoid of the very rights that Canadians proudly define for themselves."

British Journal of Canadian Studies

"Screening Out is essential reading for a general audience unfamiliar with the Canadian immigration process and governmental institutional systems."

Medical Humanities

Laura Bisaillon’s Screening Out is a brilliant and much needed study of one barely known aspect of the Canadian immigration system: the medical screening of immigration applicants and the mandatory testing for HIV.

Canadian Journal of Disability Studies