Ethnicity and im/migrant classification systems and their constituent categories have a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis in the United Kingdom. This article critically examines the categories employed and the epidemiological discourses on TB, im/migrants, and ethnic minorities in health reporting between 1965 and 2015. We employ a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse Analysis to trace the continuities and changes in the categories used and in the discursive construction of im/migrants, ethnic minorities, and TB. These continuities and disjunctures are analysed within their socio-historical context to demonstrate the historical contingency of epidemiological knowledge production. We outline two historical phases in knowledge construction. The first coincides with the period of decolonisation, which witnessed a change in discursive identity ascriptions from ‘immigrants’ to ‘ethnic groups’ in health reporting as the ‘other’. The second commenced after 1991, when the adoption of the census ethnicity categories as a standard in the collection of population statistics entrenched ethnicity categories in health reporting. We argue the health reporting discourse reveals that the ‘new’ public health exhibits continuities with the ‘old’ by targeting the immigrant ‘other’ through biosecuritisation practices. We contend that these categories originated within a postcolonial paradigm and that increasing immigration and new forms of mobility are creating the preconditions for new discourses on identity construction that have implications for the current collaborative TB strategy.

民族和移民/移民分类系统及其构成类别在英国结核病公共卫生知识的构建中有着悠久的历史。本文批判性地审查了 1965 年至 2015 年健康报告中关于结核病、移民/移民和少数族裔的分类和流行病学论述。我们采用知识社会学方法进行论述分析来追踪所用类别的连续性和变化，以及在移民/移民、少数民族和结核病的话语建构中。这些连续性和间断性在其社会历史背景下进行分析，以证明流行病学知识生产的历史偶然性。我们概述了知识构建的两个历史阶段。第一个恰逢非殖民化时期，这见证了在健康报告中作为“他者”的话语身份归属从“移民”到“族裔群体”的变化。第二个开始于 1991 年之后，当时采用人口普查种族类别作为收集人口统计数据的标准，从而在健康报告中确立了种族类别。我们认为，健康报告论述揭示了“新”公共卫生通过生物安全化实践针对移民“他者”而表现出与“旧”的连续性。我们认为，这些类别起源于后殖民范式，并且不断增加的移民和新形式的流动正在为身份构建的新话语创造先决条件，这些话语对当前的协作结核病战略有影响。