Abstract

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International migrations together with forced mobility are progressively highlighting the limits of the European welcoming, and especially its capability to ensure social inclusiveness both to migrants and refugees. Most importantly, these forms of mobility are showing the inadequacy of both the EU health systems and legal orders to ensure health protection regardless of the patient’s provenience or legal status. Furthermore, the long-lasting economic crisis of the EU area has worsened discriminations in accessing healthcare to the detriment of foreign people. As a consequence, several EU Member States have introduced measures directed to restrict the possibilities for foreigners gaining access to public health services, thus strengthening the connotations of selectiveness and verticality of health systems originally inspired on principles of universalism and equal access. As a consequence, also the right to health seems to have passed from the status of a fundamental entitlement to a tailor-made prerogative, whose full fruition has been progressively reserved to certain categories, also depending on their economic possibilities and ability to wave into the meanderings of contemporary health systems. On a different standpoint, the ‘rhetoric of the invasion’ that has permeated the EU political agenda has also opened conflicts between local people and foreigners, with the first charging the latter of causing the lack of resources, and contributing to the increase in xenophobic discourses. Nonetheless, this rhetoric has led to remove from the public discourse the contribution that migrants, refugees and their families are bringing to sustain the EU economy by contributing to national incomes and taxation – which is currently the main financial source of public health systems over Europe – and, within the parallel economy, by allowing many small enterprises to survive, especially in the fields of farming and building. Here it is possible to argue that the basic principle of respecting human rights – which should be sufficient in itself to contrast the racist deviation of the EU health policies – has been loosing strength in this historical context and has become unable to ensure alone an adequate access to healthcare to foreign people. In this context, on one part it is urgent to promote an alternative awareness on the meaning of the integration of migrants and refugees, while on the other it is necessary to rethink the idea of health protection, moving from the assumption that health is not only a fundamental right but also a way to ensure prosperity to European societies.

This panel welcomes both empirical studies and theoretical reflections aimed at contributing to the analysis of the EU and Member States policies on health access for migrants and refugees as well as to suggest alternative forms to ensure effectiveness of fundamental rights and inclusiveness in healthcare.

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Session organizer(s)

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Joana Zózimo (PT) – Sociologist, PhD candidate studying ways of dealing with mental illness (FEUC/CES-UC). Researcher at CSG-ISEG and CiiEM, main interests: mental issues, pharmaceuticals, medicalization of life, and epistemology. Coordinator of the RUEBES.

 

Carlo Botrugno (IT) – PhD in Law and New Technology at University of Bologna. Researcher and coordinator of RUEBES at L’Altro Diritto Research Centre, University of Florence. Main interests: health ethics, technological innovation in healthcare, right to health.

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