Governing migrants’ health: how activists in Taiwan construct Southeast Asian migrants’ access to (health)care

Abstract

Access to healthcare among Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan is a pressing concern. Once migrants fall ill, they are at risk of losing jobs and even jeopardizing their legal status to work and stay. While existing studies have shed light on migrants’ experiences of alienation in healthcare, there has been limited attention given to the role of migrant activists in negotiating and mobilizing concepts of health. In this article, I examine how activists mediate migrants’ access to health resources. As migrant organizations step in to care for migrants, they render migrants’ bodies legible and admissible by guiding them through the healthcare system. I suggest that activists wield the power to govern by shaping the ideals of a healthy and morally responsible migrant. Their authority to care also hinges upon crafting narratives of collective wellness that foreground the interdependent relationship between citizens and migrants, elevating migrants’ health into vital projects of governance. Through a critical analysis of discourse and praxis around migrant care, my intention is not only to challenge the narrow focus on migrants’ physical wellbeing but also to cast light on the affects of mediating care and how it shapes meanings and values attributed to migrants’ lives.

Keywords:

• Migrants’ health
• health inequality
• migrant advocacy
• healthcare
• legibility

Acknowledgements

I thank my interlocutors, especially Hang-Tang Chen, for their support during fieldwork. This article benefited from valuable feedback from colleagues at the annual meeting of the Taiwan Society for Anthropology and Ethnology (TSAE) in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in 2022. I am grateful to Allison Truitt for her comments and productive discussions. I also appreciate the feedback from two anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The only exception is Rumahku, a group founded by medical students at the National Defense Medical Center in Taipei. While Rumahku focuses on medical wellbeing, such as assisting migrants with medical referrals and improving working conditions of care facilities, they have also been vocal on migrant workers’ job security and human rights. It is thus difficult to single out migrant organizations that only take on a medical approach.

Additional information

Funding

This work received funding from the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan and the Tulane Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science.