Introduction: Medical Migrations

Abstract

This special issue of Body & Society brings together articles that describe contemporary forms of bio-medical travel. The conjuncture of mobility and bodily states occurs at a particular epistemic moment: the first decades of the 21st century, when medical travels and travelers are participating in border crossings as self-consciously biological beings, and when biological life, health and sickness, survival and death, are central to subject formation, ethical practice, political struggle, regulation and governance. In the last several decades, increasing numbers of people have crossed national borders and traversed great distances for bio-medical, experimental or alternative (complementary) medical, surgical or cosmetic interventions and/or bodily transformations. Some of these travelers – often described by the mass media as ‘medical tourists’ (a term we subject to a pointed critique) – journey to foreign lands in search of cures and therapies for a variety of conditions. The elderly and well-insured are searching for cures to the maladies that commonly accompany aging: chronic, noncontagious illnesses and afflictions, from heart disease to end-stage kidney failure, from obesity to diabetes to congestive heart disease to dental care and depression. Women and their partners travel in search of solutions to infertility; men in search of cures for sexual dysfunction. Both men and women, young and old, search for cures to addictions and psychiatric illnesses. And many people travel across borders to purchase much sought-after and expensive