Migration, Health and Inequality in Asia

Abstract

ABSTRACTFocusing on health, migration and inequality, this contribution examines the role of citizenship in shaping migrants’ experiences of health. The idea of national citizenship has frequently dominated the framing of debates about whether states or markets should play the dominant role in health. Yet, health inequalities are embedded in transnational flows of people, capital and ideas, which are themselves a product of history. Migration is thus essential to understanding the transnational production and reinforcement, or mitigation, of health inequalities. Adopting a focus on migration in Asia, past and present, this article argues that the health risks and vulnerabilities that migrants face are a result of both state and market failures. Migrants’ exclusion from various forms of care and protection, and their political disenfranchisement, expose a fraught relationship between health and citizenship for those who move within and across borders. At the same time, both historical and contemporary experience demonstrates how migrants might contest these inequalities and allow us to reimagine alternative forms of citizenship. Efforts to ensure the health and well‐being of migrants demonstrate diverse alliances at work, even if such alliances remain limited when confronted with the logic of the nation, borders and security.