The care of the immigrant self: technologies of citizenship and the healthcare sector

Abstract

Purpose -In the public arena, immigrants are easily recognized as ''vulnerable'' but also ''as a risk'' for the social environment. They are associated with stigmatized infectious-contagious health conditions, with deviant or disturbed behaviours, with poor education and hygiene, and with dubious morality and parental competence. This paper aims to analyse the complex array of targeted programmes designed in the last decades in Europe in order to intervene on immigrants' health practices and lifestyles.Design/methodology/approach -The paper was designed to engage with a critical approach to the healthcare sector, rendering visible the rationale behind such programmes of intervention by focusing on the relations between the representation of immigrants' health, the symbolic and physical borders of the body and the nation, the welfare state, and the contemporary politics of care.Findings -The paper highlights: the racialization of public health and social care policy, which have been constituting migrant populations as unsanitary citizens; the intervention of social care programmes as technologies of citizenship in order to guide these populations towards specific models of body, health, behaviour and life projects; and the paradigmatic shifts in the way healthcare is perceived and deployed, and its ethical and political implications. Originality/value -Building on the contributions from medical anthropology, historical sociology, and governmentality studies, the paper sheds a new light on the subject by positioning the practices of healthcare on a racialized post-colonial setting of intervening on populations constituting vulnerabilities and managing risks through medical expertise.

“I Don’t Have the Nerve to Tell These People That I Cannot Help Them!”: Vulnerability, Ethnography, and Good Intentions

“…These same forces allowed for a "little treat" to be kept for others, but they also stratified and hierarchized who "really deserved" and who was not sufficiently compliant to receive support, which was made available to the detriment of the life of the former workers. It did not solve the problem in its genesis and did not allow for any kind of counterargument because, as is well known, compassion knows no enemies [15,16]. Similar to what Bornstein [54] found in her ethnography with Christian ONGs in Africa, the attitude of Mariana and Carla allows us to understand how an economy of care and ethics operates, and under which moral imperatives the possibilities for help are determined [55].…”

“…The technologies adopted by programs targeting [13] populations deemed "vulnerable" living in these socially and spatially marginalized territories, ended up producing consequences similar to the ones these programs were ideally combating. The existence of power is, thus, paradoxically based on the need to constantly produce this marginal condition where many individuals find themselves [14], making them simultaneously victims and perpetrators [15][16][17]. These dynamics wind up perpetuating the binomial compassion and repression, which is engulfed in good intentions and is materialized by programs developed by state and non-state entities established locally when dealing with "vulnerable communities".…”

“…The increasing pathologization of behaviors based on precarious housing conditions and the belief that changing them would also discipline the lives of those targeted by these same programs, has led to a proliferation of local initiatives and institutions which direct and indirectly exert control over citizens' bodies and behaviors [18,19]. These projects frequently focus on health as the ideal governing technology, which has been "used as a shorthand for the capacity of the modern self to be transformed through the deployment of various rational practices of self" [16] (p. 45). This type of action [20], which decontextualizes the historical, political, and social production of suffering and vulnerability [21], is often well intended, but provokes unplanned consequences [22].…”

O terceiro lado do muro. A arte e as suas cidades1

“…Na verdade, ela reforça, por um lado, a noção de propriedade e da relação que um proprietário tem relativamente a um espaço de usufruto público (Young, 2014) e, por outro, uma determinada visão estética e sensorial da cidade, o que é, que aspecto deve ter, de que forma se pode concretizar e usufruir, reduzindo as formas efetivas de construção, circulação, apropriação e negociação sobre o espaço urbano. Este ponto é relevante para a tentativa feita acima de separar dois segmentos de produção cultural, não redutíveis ao tipo de expressão cultural em si mesma: de um lado, uma produção que mais diretamente se relaciona com a construção política e económica das indústrias culturais e criativas; do outro, uma produção que está intimamente ligada à noção de regeneração urbana desde os anos 90 do século passado, destinada a fomentar valores de cidadania, sensação de pertença e inclusão social (Hall & Robertson, 2001) entre populações tidas como "vulneráveis" (Pussetti & Barros, 2012). Na verdade, se a arte urbana ganhou protagonismo, como vimos, no mundo do audiovisual, do design, da publicidade ou da moda, ela tornou-se uma ferramenta poderosa para a retórica da democratização da cultura e o empoderamento das comunidades locais (Bailey et al, 2004).…”

Culture, ambivalence, and schismogenesis: Mothering double binds and gendered identities within Cape Verdean and Indian migrant families (Portugal)

“…(Celeste,32 years old) Portugal, in contrast with many European countries, presents very low levels of media coverage and public discussion of migrant families and has not adopted progressive gender policies (Trova˜o, 2014). Nevertheless, driven by various assumptions about how migrant gender and family identities generate inclusion or exclusion and contribute to the reproduction of migrants' vulnerability, social welfare programs increasingly seek to intervene in certain sexual, mothering, and childrearing practices found among migrants of African origin through specific technologies of care, responsibility, and morality (Pusseti & Barros, 2012).…”