Health: a key component of mobility justice

The first webinar in our series, ‘The Health of Migrants and the Right to Health’, co-hosted with the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet).

With Nicola Burns, Karolina Follis and Luca Follis.

In contemporary societies of the Global North, asylum seekers, migrants and refugees are among the groups experiencing some of the most persistent health inequalities and healthcare deficits. Drawing on evidence gathered during a recently completed project Doctors within Borders: Networking Initiative on Healthcare for Mobile Populations (Wellcome Trust, 2019-2021) we argue for a novel approach to migrant healthcare informed by mobilities scholarship. The paper begins by situating our work within the fields of critical border studies and mobilities, noting the relative inattention to health within mobilities scholarship. We then outline the tension between sedentarism and mobility in contemporary healthcare systems. We argue that built around the needs of settled populations, healthcare systems are ill-suited to caring for migrants, refugees and other mobile groups who (a) present with health problems associated with displacement and poverty; (b) lack regular legal status and/or permanent address. Further, the apparent sedentary focus of health care systems belies the mobility of data, diseases and the resources necessary to provide health for all.

We reflect on the implications of the mobile nature of health data and resources within borders and asylum systems. Building on Sheller’s work (2018) we make the case for health to be viewed as a key component of mobility justice. For Sheller mobility justice moves beyond ‘sedentarist’ theories of justice, offering an egalitarian framework concerned with fairness, equity and inclusion across multiple scales and sites of interaction. Justice, she argues, is a mobile assemblage of contingent subjects, enacted contexts and fleeting moments of practice and political engagement. Utilising  empirical examples, we show how this perspective enables a productive rethinking of health and healthcare for mobile populations.

Book your place on Eventbrite here.

The Health of Migrants and the Right to Health – Webinar Series, March-May 2023

Health is a fundamental human right, yet in practice, there are many barriers to the realisation of ‘Health for All’. The health inequalities and barriers to access healthcare systems faced by people-onthemove and by non-citizens more generally, have long been recognised in research, policy and practice. While the World Health Organisation continues to advocate for ‘migrant sensitive health systems’ (2010), healthcare systems are bounded within the nationstate, subject to the laws and policies of governments that increasingly restrict the rights of ‘migrants’ to access their rights. As rights to health are restricted, health and social protection systems are mobilised within hostile environment regimes as a means of surveillance.

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated the need for universal health care and the fragility of national health systems. This series of four seminars and one online networking event is organised by University of Glasgow’s GRAMNET and University of Bristol’s Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) will reflect on access to health care for migrants, refugees and those seeking asylum. Starting from different disciplinary standpoints, the speakers offer empirical and theoretical work exploring the relations between health and migration and the role of migration systems in the production of health inequalities. We will end the series with a (fun!) online networking event.

Visit the series webpage here.