In a time before COVID, the Doctors within Borders network hosted a workshop, the first of three planned for 2020.
In January 2020, social scientists, healthcare practitioners and activists travelled to Lancaster University to talk about the challenges faced by marginalised communities, including migrants and refugees, in claiming their right to healthcare.
COVID-19 subsequently threw a harsh and unforgiving light on these issues. In many places, the pandemic deepened existing health inequalities, it disrupted and arrested the movement of migrants and significantly reshaped the (im)mobilities associated with healthcare delivery and governance all over the world.
It also disrupted our plans to release a collection of working papers, based on the papers presented in the workshop. But we are finally delighted to share the Healthcare Mobilities & National Health Systems: Working Papers Collection.
The papers provide a pre-COVID snapshot of national health systems struggling to cope with the mobility of migrant and international populations, as well as widespread efforts to curtail access to healthcare for these groups by embedding bordering mechanisms and eligibility policies within the very functioning of healthcare systems.
Even though these working papers are not “about” COVID, the issues raised and the insights offered are more important than ever.
The collection features contributions from Jessica Potter & Isabel Meier, Agnieszka Kosowicz, Stephanie Sodero, F. Deniz Mardin & Nuray Özgülnar, Pawel Lewicki, Gwyneth Lonergan and Kathryn Cassidy.
Read and download the full collection here.