Negotiating invisible lines: Cross-border emergency care in the rural north of Scandinavia

ABSTRACT

Cross-border cooperation is increasingly practised as a spatial planning strategy in health care. This observation is emphasized in numerous reports on transboundary agreements in European border regions. While the projects hint at an ongoing contestation and reconfiguration of nationally bordered health care pathways, they have rarely been subject to critical geographical inquiry. Departing from contemporary border studies debates, the article addresses this gap by providing a nuanced perspective on the socio-spatial complexity of health care practices across Europe’s internal borders. The author demonstrates this empirically by focusing on a framework for emergency care assistance in the northernmost regions of Scandinavia. He uses a heuristic approach to borderscapes as assemblages, and conceptually argues that the strategic reconfiguration of emergency care provision through cross-border cooperation is not adequately captured by a narrative of dissolving topographically bordered sovereignty (i.e. the commonplace notion of overcoming national boundaries). Based on a qualitative analysis of motives, procedures and hurdles, the author concludes that the attempt to cope with demography and distance in rural northern health care formats a socio-spatial arrangement in its own right, a case-specific geography of emergency care that is characterized by a complex interplay between different sites and their multiple bordering trajectories.

EDITORS:

• Arnt Fløysand, Catriona Turner

KEYWORDS:

• assemblage
• borderscape
• cross-border cooperation
• emergency health care
• Northern Scandinavia

Acknowledgements

The fieldwork for this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and carried out as part of the research project ‘Cross-border Assemblages of Medical Practices’ (Grenzüberschreitende Assemblages medizinischer Praktiken) under the auspices of Judith Miggelbrink (grant number SFB 1199/1-2016). The project is affiliated to the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition (Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 1199: Verräumlichungsprozesse unter Globalisierungsbedingungen) at the University of Leipzig. The author is particularly grateful for the critical and productive comments of two anonymous reviewers and the editorial team.

Notes

1 Interreg is a European Union instrument to support cooperation across borders through project funding, with the aim to tackle common challenges and find shared solutions in various fields, one of which is the health environment.

2 The cyphers in parentheses following the quotes indicate the interview number within the affiliated research project (in chronological order) and the cited paragraph of the transcript.