Migrant and Refugee Access to Health Systems
Challenging (Im)mobilities in Healthcare
Published on 9. May 2025
Book
Hardback
236 pages
978-1-0353-2497-2 (ISBN)
Description
In light of the ongoing struggle faced by migrants and refugees trying to access healthcare, this thought-provoking book tackles key issues at the intersection of mobility and health. It critically engages with the bureaucratic, economic and cultural barriers faced by these groups, arguing that a sedentary bias persists in national health systems.
Chapters examine the challenges of providing healthcare to people on the move, tackling issues ranging from registration and border control, to abortion access and mobility justice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Expert authors combine theoretical approaches with in-depth case studies from continents including Asia, Europe and South America, critically analysing modern healthcare systems within the context of heightened human mobility and climate change. In addition to highlighting major difficulties, the book explores spaces of resistance and opportunities for change.
This interdisciplinary book is a vital tool for students and scholars in medical and political anthropology, health and migration, sociology, and geography. The inclusion of practical experience and contributions from healthcare professionals also makes this an important read for medical students and educators interested in health access and provision.
Chapters examine the challenges of providing healthcare to people on the move, tackling issues ranging from registration and border control, to abortion access and mobility justice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Expert authors combine theoretical approaches with in-depth case studies from continents including Asia, Europe and South America, critically analysing modern healthcare systems within the context of heightened human mobility and climate change. In addition to highlighting major difficulties, the book explores spaces of resistance and opportunities for change.
This interdisciplinary book is a vital tool for students and scholars in medical and political anthropology, health and migration, sociology, and geography. The inclusion of practical experience and contributions from healthcare professionals also makes this an important read for medical students and educators interested in health access and provision.
Reviews / Votes
'Bringing together contributions from international healthcare practice and academia within a mobility justice framework, this collection offers a powerful contribution to our understanding of the intersections of people on the move, border regimes and healthcare systems. The authors skilfully and sensitively elucidate not only the harms generated by sedentarist approaches to healthcare but also how these are being opposed, offering timely alternatives for mobile health futures.' -- Kathryn Cassidy, Northumbria University, UK 'With overriding themes of justice, power, and the social construction of the other, this excellent book covers a diverse range of examples, all focussed on the ideas of movement, migration, bordering, bodies, and healthcare. This is a valuable set of perspectives which will broaden and deepen the understanding for those in many disciplines of the meaning of care, both for migrant populations and for other marginalised or mobile people within our own countries. Perhaps the most impactful are the stories and words of the migrants themselves, which will live long in the memory of the reader.' -- Anthony Staines, Dublin City University, Ireland 'Bringing together the literature on borders, healthcare, and mobility justice, this book reveals how people on the move must navigate the "sedentary bias" of modern health systems. Eye-opening case studies depict the real stakes of emerging social, political and technological systems that block healthcare for many people under hostile border regimes. The book urges us all to question how health systems and border regimes deny care to migrants and refugees who are stigmatized as "undeserving" - despite national legal rights to healthcare and global human rights to health for all people.' -- Mimi Sheller, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USAMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cheltenham
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-0353-2497-2 (9781035324972)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Edited by Luca Follis, Associate Professor in Criminology, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Sussex, Karolina Follis, Professor in Politics and Society, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University and Nicola Burns, Senior Lecturer in Disability Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK
Content
Contents
A poem by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan xii
Introduction: Mobile patients and sedentary health systems 1
Karolina Follis, Luca Follis and Nicola Burns
PART I HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURES
2 HIV, citizenship and bordering mechanisms in Berlin 17
Pawel Lewicki
3 Emotional borderwork, a hostile affective milieu and
everyday resistance in the British National Health Service 29
Jessica L. Potter and Isabel Meier
4 Registration without documentation: an exploration of the
reluctance to register patients without documents in North
East London 42
Kitty Worthing
5 Making health services work for seasonal agriculture
workers in Huelva, Spain 55
Angels Escriva, Nora Komposch, and Natalia Ribas-Mateos
PART II POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF MIGRANT HEALTH
6 Medicalising borders, bordering healthcare: governing
asylum-seekers' mobility and welfare at the Greek hotspots 70
Danai Avgeri
7 Expanding refugee access to healthcare and governing
refugee mobility: conflicting rationales in a single field 84
Souad Osseiran
8 Looking at the interplay of migration, healthcare, and
border control: the Italian case of "Ferry Quarantine" 95
Carlo Botrugno
9 The role of (im)mobilities in migrants' experiences of
pregnancy and reproductive injustice 107
Gwyneth Lonergan
PART III TECHNOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE AND
SURVEILLANCE
10 Not quite an emancipatory mobility: obstacles in
abortion access for Ukrainian refugees within the Polish
reproductive health care system 123
Monika Ewa Kaminska
11 Beyond Covid Digital Data Infrastructure: experiences
from rural southern Ecuador 139
Fu-Yu Chang
12 Public health measures as bordering: health and mobility
justice during pandemic times in Kuwait 151
Sajida Z. Ally
PART IV MOBILE HEALTH FUTURES
13 Unsheltered (im)mobilities and access to healthcare in
Frankfurt am Main 169
Corinna A. Di Stefano
14 The universalising medium has stopped universalising:
the vertical and horizontal retrenchment of citizenship in
austerity Britain 183
Piyush Pushkar and Louise Tomkow
15 Green borders? Challenging paradoxical NHS agendas 197
Jessica Beresford and Stephanie Sodero
16 Afterword: Mobile patients in sedentary healthcare
systems: reflections from a geographer 210
Anthony C. Gartrell
Index 219
A poem by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan xii
Introduction: Mobile patients and sedentary health systems 1
Karolina Follis, Luca Follis and Nicola Burns
PART I HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURES
2 HIV, citizenship and bordering mechanisms in Berlin 17
Pawel Lewicki
3 Emotional borderwork, a hostile affective milieu and
everyday resistance in the British National Health Service 29
Jessica L. Potter and Isabel Meier
4 Registration without documentation: an exploration of the
reluctance to register patients without documents in North
East London 42
Kitty Worthing
5 Making health services work for seasonal agriculture
workers in Huelva, Spain 55
Angels Escriva, Nora Komposch, and Natalia Ribas-Mateos
PART II POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE OF MIGRANT HEALTH
6 Medicalising borders, bordering healthcare: governing
asylum-seekers' mobility and welfare at the Greek hotspots 70
Danai Avgeri
7 Expanding refugee access to healthcare and governing
refugee mobility: conflicting rationales in a single field 84
Souad Osseiran
8 Looking at the interplay of migration, healthcare, and
border control: the Italian case of "Ferry Quarantine" 95
Carlo Botrugno
9 The role of (im)mobilities in migrants' experiences of
pregnancy and reproductive injustice 107
Gwyneth Lonergan
PART III TECHNOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE AND
SURVEILLANCE
10 Not quite an emancipatory mobility: obstacles in
abortion access for Ukrainian refugees within the Polish
reproductive health care system 123
Monika Ewa Kaminska
11 Beyond Covid Digital Data Infrastructure: experiences
from rural southern Ecuador 139
Fu-Yu Chang
12 Public health measures as bordering: health and mobility
justice during pandemic times in Kuwait 151
Sajida Z. Ally
PART IV MOBILE HEALTH FUTURES
13 Unsheltered (im)mobilities and access to healthcare in
Frankfurt am Main 169
Corinna A. Di Stefano
14 The universalising medium has stopped universalising:
the vertical and horizontal retrenchment of citizenship in
austerity Britain 183
Piyush Pushkar and Louise Tomkow
15 Green borders? Challenging paradoxical NHS agendas 197
Jessica Beresford and Stephanie Sodero
16 Afterword: Mobile patients in sedentary healthcare
systems: reflections from a geographer 210
Anthony C. Gartrell
Index 219