https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2648-4130
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ABSTRACT
Current literature on internal bordering has suggested understanding health care as a key migration control field. This article takes a closer look at the humanitarian medical offices in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and patients from Romania and Bulgaria in precarious life circumstances. It addresses the strategies identified in the accounts of frontline workers beyond the mere provision of access to free and anonymous medical attention. Based on 16 interviews with medical staff, social workers and administrative officers, two approaches emerged. One clearly strives for the formalisation of the human right to health care in close collaboration with, or by challenging the local bordering actors; the other insists on bypassing any point of contact with them, focusing exclusively on informal and direct solutions. The interviews showcase how the resulting strategies can contribute to internal bordering and debordering on an urban scale, and affect the individuals’ trajectories as patients and as migrants.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Name changed by the author.
2 The name Frankfurt will be used in the following.
3 Germany implemented the Directive 2004/30 in the Freedom of Movement Act/EU of 30 July 2004 about the regulations on EU migrants’ right of entry and residence in the same year. It determines the EU citizens right to stay in the country and stipulates that economically inactive EU citizens must provide for their own health insurance to stay in the country (Gago Citation2023, 10).
4 Interviews were conducted along a semi-structured question guide and the recorded interviews have been fully transcribed and coded with MAXQDA software according to the Grounded Theory approach. Following a qualitative-reconstructive methodology, the emphasis of the interviews has been targeting the interpretative knowledge and meaning-making processes identifiable in the accounts of the interlocutors.
5 It is noteworthy to mention that the legal contexts of EU citizens’ expulsions differ from country to country and can be based on bilateral agreements (see Vrăbiescu Citation2021 for France and Romania).