Conference Contribution Details
Mandatory Fields
Stan, S.
Faculty of Public Health Medicine Summer Scientific Meeting
Transnational healthcare practices of Romanian migrants in Ireland: social mobility and the marketisation of healthcare services in Europe
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Dublin
Poster Presentation
2016
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Optional Fields
31-MAY-16
01-JUN-16
This research paper deals with the transnational healthcare practices of Romanian migrants in Ireland. It explores the implications of migrants’ transnational healthcare practices for the transformation of citizenship in Europe, more particularly in terms of access to free public healthcare. The paper explores the links between migrants’ transnational healthcare practices and two other important processes: 1) inequalities in access to healthcare services in migrants’ countries of origin and of destination; and 2) the contribution of healthcare privatisation to these inequalities. It shows that Romanian migrants’ transnational healthcare practices function as strategies of social mobility for migrants, while also reflecting the increasing privatisation of healthcare services in Ireland and Romania. The paper argues that these processes are far from specific to Ireland, Romania, and the migration flows uniting them. Rather, they draw our attention to the rise of an unevenly developed European healthcare assemblage and citizenship regime in which patients’ movements across borders are closely interlinked with diminishing and increasingly unequal access to public healthcare services.