Search

We draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Brussels (Belgium) on the health care experiences of undocumented migrants. We explore the implications of the double position of the ethnographer, who is both a researcher and a practicing doctor. We describe how the intimate knowledge the ethnographer-cum-clinician holds about the health care system influenced and shaped the data collection, analysis and subsequent policy recommendations. We examine the ethical dilemmas in conducting research from an engaged position about care practices toward vulnerable populations in one's own professional field. We conclude with recommendations on how to challenge and interrupt complexities faced by multi-positioned ethnographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humanitarian aid projects associated with the emergence of refugee camps within European territories are generally perceived as apolitical. Scholars however, are increasingly questioning this view, pointing to many, often untold, ways in which humanitarianism interacts with the politics of migration and border enforcement. This article examines the case of a temporary refugee camp set up in Brussels in September 2015. We show how organizational and spatiotemporal particularities, as well as media framing of the humanitarian assistance, led to controversy, civil initiatives, and hyperpoliticization, eventually calling the state to take responsibility for the refugees, but simultaneously silenced other explicit political responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The position of undocumented migrants in western democracies has drastically changed over the last fifty years. Their social rights have increasingly come under pressure. This article provides a critical review of the ethical and philosophical issues that are linked to restrictions in access to healthcare for undocumented migrants. We analyze the current national and international juridical framework, and explore how this legislation is put into practice. We argue that social rights are increasingly used as a logic to regulate and control the presence of migrants and that social illegitimacy hinders undocumented migrants' access to healthcare. Furthermore, we explore the tensions between the discourses of human rights and medical humanitarianism. We suggest that the present medical care for undocumented migrants in Belgium is rather delivered in a humanitarian framework than as an expression of a right to health. Finally, this article points to biopolitical aspects of medical humanitarianism based on a Foucauldian framework. Medical humanitarianism fundamentally changes the content and relations in care. It gives rise to new relations of power and a fundamental inequality in the value of lives emerges. In medical practice this impacts on the quality of therapeutic relationships: it causes objectification of the human body as well as medicalization, it reduces agency and limits the credibility of advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]