Existential Displacement: Health Care and Embodied Un/Belonging of Irregular Migrants in Norway

Synnøve K N Bendixsen

doi:10.1007/s11013-020-09677-3

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork and interviews in Oslo and Bergen, Norway, this article discusses irregular migrants’ experiences of existential displacement and the tactics they use to try to re-establish a sense of emplacement and belonging. More specifically, it argues that irregular migrants’ experiences of embodied unbelonging are a consequence of a violent form of governmentality that includes specific laws, healthcare structures, and migration management rationalities. The article makes this argument by tracing how these experiences translate into embodied effects that feature prominently in migrants’ narratives of suffering while living in a country that purports to provide welfare services to all. The narratives of their state of being-in-the-world are ways through which migrants both experience and express the violence and deprivation they face. I argue that these narratives are instances of structures of feeling (Williams 1973), which are shaped by modes of governmentality. The article shows that irregular migrants’ coping strategies centrally involve faith, religious communities and friends. Irregular migrants draw on these relationships to get by, access healthcare, and to resist the (health) effects of social deprivation and political violence. These relationships allow irregular migrants to find meaningful ways of being-in-the-world and rebuilding, to some extent, a sense of entitlement and belonging.

Highlights

This article explores the existential character of displacement and the ways in which irregular migrants struggle to find meaningful ways of being-in-the-world in Norway
I view irregular migrants’ narratives of ‘‘embodied un/belonging’’ as reflective of the broader political processes structuring irregularity, their living conditions, and the uncertainty of waiting. Their lack of access to health care and rights as irregular migrants are generated through politics and management and legitimized through political statements that as ‘illegals’ they do not belong in this nation-state
The data presented here are drawn from a larger ethnographic study of irregular migrants and their access to healthcare and political mobilization that I conducted in Norway from 2011 to 2014

Summary

Introduction

I view irregular migrants’ narratives of ‘‘embodied un/belonging’’ (see Mattes and Land introduction in this SI) as reflective of the broader political processes structuring irregularity, their living conditions, and the uncertainty of waiting Their lack of access to health care and rights as irregular migrants are generated through politics and management and legitimized through political statements that as ‘illegals’ they do not belong in this nation-state. This article provides an ethnographic case study of how biopower operates in relation to irregular migrants by focusing on the ways in which irregular migrants narrate their being-in-the-world and the formation of embodied un/belonging It shows how the biopower induces and configures processes of exclusion/inclusion and embodied un/belonging that have detrimental consequences for people’s health and well-being (cf Das and Poole 2004). Irregular migrants’ experiences of being stigmatized in the public sphere (by the media and politicians) and of social exclusion come to characterize their understanding of encounters with healthcare institutions (Bendixsen 2018) and generate a form of embodied unbelonging

Research Methods and Participants

Discussion and Conclusion