Performing deservingness. Humanitarian health care provision for migrants in Germany

Abstract

In this paper, I critically investigate humanitarian aid for migrant populations in Germany. I aim to enhance the existing literature on migrant deservingness and humanitarian aid by focusing on the performative aspects of concrete face-to-face interactions between physicians/volunteers and patients. I argue that despite efforts of volunteers to provide non-discriminatory care, the encounters between patients as aid-receivers and volunteers/physicians as aid-providers are inevitably shaped by power inequalities. These immanent power inequalities may lead patients to perform their deservingness, that is, to present themselves as helpless sufferers rather than empowered subjects. Simultaneously, patient-solicitants are prevented from feeling and enacting a sense of entitlement. Those patients who do not heed to the social mechanisms of humanitarian aid, such as being thankful and humble, cause disenchantment on the side of some medical professionals who provide care as part of humanitarian networks and subsequently, they may be turned away.The research project focused on the migration trajectories and illness experiences of undocumented Latin American migrants and their access to healthcare. The analysis draws on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork with 35 Latin American migrants in Berlin (2008–2011), 22 interviews with healthcare providers, and my experience as an activist/volunteer for a Berlin-based humanitarian NGO (2008–2012).