Through an analysis of Jean-Pierre and LucDardenne’s film La Promesse’ (1996) and DiegoQuemada-Díez’s The Golden Dream (2013), thischapter explores how undocumented migrants areruthlessly exploited and exposed to death incities–London and Antwerp–and on the road,traveling from Guatemala through Mexico in anattempt to make it into the U.S. Engaged incritical commentaries on the contemporarymigratory condition articulated in global cinema,the chapter composes diverse migratory scenariosto render visible the national, urban, and racialfrontiers of human encounter in which racializedmigrant bodies experience the precarities dealt bythe protective and predatory practices of officialnational formations and opportunistic criminalenterprises, respectively.

The Introduction illustrates our commitment toaesthetics-as-method, which enables us to bringtogether diverse concepts, bodies, passages, andimages. The chapters map the political stakes of ourcommitment to aesthetics-as-method. In addition tooutlining the methods, chapters, and key concepts,the Introduction raises critical questions regardinghow everyday and historical political apparatusesand processes distribute bodies, affects, death, andsenses in ways that challenge or sustain theimmanence of sovereignty, while provoking readers toexperiment with affective intimacies that enablethem apprehend the ethical weight of proximate anddistant others.

At the conclusion of the war, Major General Roy Burston, the Army Director General of Medical Services and Chair of the national VAD Council, wrote, ‘The past seven years have brought about a complete change in our attitude towards the employment of women in the armed forces.’ Throughout the war Burston supported the employment and development of VAs and then the AAMWS in the military. Their indispensability had been recognised. Yet, with the end of the war, AAMWS were discharged and Burston’s suggestion to maintain a cohort of women ready to serve in the event of a future war was, as he wrote: ‘…that the [civilian] VADs provide an organisation under which this training could be most effectively carried out in peace time. In addition, it is felt that there would be many advantages in maintaining the [civilian] VADs with their tradition of service which has been built up over the past 30 years or more.’ The war had provided an environment for women to expand their job opportunities, and it gave servicewomen space in the military to demonstrate the value not only of historically female dominated duties but of women’s labour generally. But the end of the war effectively erased this recognition.

Honouring her strong character and sense of service, Alice Appleford was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal in 1949. Administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross as the highest award for a member of the nursing profession internationally, part of Appleford’s citation reads: ‘No one who came in contact with Major Appleford could fail to recognise her as a leader of women. Her sense of duty, her sterling solidarity of character, her humanity, sincerity, and kindliness of heart set for others a very high example.’ Before her marriage to Sydney Appleford, Alice had achieved a distinguished career as a nurse. Known then as Alice Ross-King, she had trained at Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital and in November 1914 embarked for Egypt to serve with the AANS. Awarded both the Royal Red Cross and the Military Medal, Sister Ross King became one of Australia’s most highly decorated women of the First World War. The Florence Nightingale Medal in 1949 added to her deserved accolades, but this medal was awarded for her contribution during a different war and to a different service. Although a trained nurse with a dedicated career to the profession, it was Alice Appleford’s interest in training and organising VADs, those not technically part of the nursing profession, during the Second World War that saw her receive the Nightingale Medal.

This chapter turns to consensual and dissensualmodes of separation to illustrate how the COVID-19pandemic has turned the present into a time ofintense separation, one of which is between thosebodies marked as essential versus non-essential,those that have ‘pre-existing conditions’ andthose without, and those located in precariouszones of abandonment, congestion, and containment,and those that, owing to prevailing economicdistancing and apartness, can practice a life ofsocial distancing. These precarious lives arerendered in intimate portraits and scenarios inEdna O’Brien’s novel The Little Red Chairs (amedia genre that sees the world more patiently andin a more socially contextualized way than mostnews media) and Stephen Frears’s film Dirty PrettyThings (2002). With these aesthetic readings ofprecarious migrant lives in London, we look atmoments of solidarity among exploitable “nightpeople” who work illegally in the hospitalityindustry. Ultimately, our reflections on aestheticseparation/separation aesthetics in the wake ofthe pandemic help map the dynamics ofvisibility/invisibility, community/immunity,hospitality/hostility that the contemporarypolitics of the pandemic amplifies.

This chapter and the images that accompany itpays special attention to the workings of ‘mimeticviolence’ and emphasizes what we can learn byexamining the COVID-19 pandemic’s transversalityby comparing, combining, and contrasting it withother sublimes. Ultimately, the chapter examinesthe early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic’stransversality by comparing, combining, andcontrasting it with the racial, nuclear, andapocalyptic sublimes.

Kathleen Best was a nurse to her core. Completing her training at the Western Suburbs Hospital in Sydney in 1932, Best went onto train in midwifery before holding leadership positions at several Sydney hospitals. In May 1940, she began her military career, joining the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) as Matron of the 2/5th Australian General Hospital (AGH). Breaking ground as the youngest matron of the AANS, Best soon demonstrated her strength of leadership and character. By 1942, she had seen service in the Middle East, had led her nurses of the 2/5th AGH through the evacuation from Greece, and had been awarded the Royal Red Cross for her courage and efficiency. Best’s service abroad with the Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) early in the Second World War made her well versed in military organisation. Showing her understanding of the effective operation of the military medical service, in January 1943 she stated, ‘Every position in a medical unit is important for ultimate efficiency ... and every girl in this service is helping to save lives’. In this statement Best was not referring to the nurses of the AANS; the ‘life-saving’ work Best was referring to was that being undertaken by the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service (AAMWS).

The wartime priorities for Australia shifted during the summer of 1941–42 as tensions in the Pacific increased, with Japan and the United States entering and quickly mobilising for war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. With the sinking of the HMAS Sydney off the West Australian coast in November 1941, Australia’s concern for the Indo-Pacific was already mounting. When Singapore then fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and with it 18 000 Australian troops captured, Australia felt the situation worsening. With the first bombing of Darwin in February 1942, soon after the fall of Singapore, war had reached the nation’s shores, and the threat of invasion became immediate. Australia then withdrew its troops from the Middle East, where the majority had been serving, and the defence of its own territory dominated the nation’s consciousness. This sparked a change in attitude for Australia which caused a rapid growth in service enlistments, including with both the civilian and Army VAD organisations.