Convenors
Veronica Buffon, University of Messina
veronica.buffon@unime.it
Camilla De Ambroggi, University of Padua
camilla.deambroggi@unipd.it
Over the last few years, migration scholars have largely recognized that the restructuring of supply chains and the disintegration of enterprises due to outsourcing have massively affected migrant workers (Drahokoupil, 2015), producing an ethno-racial segmentation of the labour market (Fellini, Fullin, 2018). Most migrants in Europe work in sectors where labour is considered dirty, dangerous, and demanding (such as the service and care sectors, agriculture, and construction). In this sense, literature on migration is increasingly concerned with the relationship between low-paid and exploited working conditions and the development of work-related illnesses (Laurell, Noriega 1989; Holmes, 2013; Redini et al., 2020).
Encompassing family, migration path, living conditions and professional trajectory, Global Health Studies and Medical Anthropology (Bodini, Stefanini, 2014; Maciocco, Santomauro, 2014; Quesada et al., 2011) urge to situate migrant workers’ health within the broader framework of their social reproduction. Countering the institutional narratives of occupational health as individual/personal responsibility, the call for refocusing the analysis on the social structure as a place of danger, harm and suffering and the reproduction of hierarchies and inequalities is still open. These insights are crucial for understanding occupational health as a construction based on structurally asymmetrical relationships between the holders of capital and those who sell their labour power (Décosse, 2011).
Drawing on ethnographic research on migrant workers’ health experience across European regions, we aim to delve comparative and interdisciplinary analysis into the experience, production, and challenge of occupational health disparities at the intersection of gender, race, and class.
Open questions
- How do certain aspects of the labour process, or changes in work rhythms and workload, impact wear and tear processes incorporated into the body?
- How do migrant’s status, precarious living conditions, and unsafe working conditions affect migrants’ perception of their health?
- How are health-related risks for migrant workers socially constructed at discursive and practical levels by health professionals, and how do these narratives contribute to invisibilise migrants’ health problems?
- How are migrant workers experiencing health issues hierarchised at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality and legal status?
- How do illnesses shape migrants’ experience within and against their workplace and health institutions? How do they (re)produce and negotiate health and care beyond the individual and personal responsibility?
Keywords
migrants’ occupational health; severe exploitation; coping strategies; migration policies; labour processes; health institutions.
Field of studies
migration studies; labour studies; medical anthropology; sociology of work; social reproduction theory; geography.
References
Bodini, C., Stefanini, A.
2014 Salute globale: storia macro e micro di un nuovo approccio, in Salute & Territorio, 25, pp. 340-45.
Décosse, F.
2011 Migrations sous contrôle: agriculture intensive et saisonniers marocains sous contrat «OMI», Thèse de doctorat, EHESS.
Drahokoupil, J.
2015 The Outsourcing Challenge. Organizing Workers Across Fragmented Production Networks, ETUI.
Fellini, I., Fullin, G.
2018 «Employment Change, Institutions and Migrant Labour», in Stato & Mercato, 113, 2, pp. 293-330.
Holmes, S. M.
2011 «Structural vulnerability and hierarchies of ethnicity and citizenship on the farm», in Medical Anthropology, 30, 4, pp. 425–449.
Laurell, C., Noriega, M.
1989 La salud en la fábrica, Colección Problemas de México. México DF: ERA Ediciones.
Maciocco, G., Santomauro, F.
2014 La salute globale. Determinanti sociali e diseguaglianze, Carocci.
Quesada, J., Hart, L. K., Bourgois, P.
2011 «Structural Vulnerability and Health: Latino Migrant Laborers in the United States», in Medical Anthropology, 30, 4, pp. 339–362.
Redini, V., Vianello, F. A., Zaccagnini, F.
2020 Il lavoro che usura, Franco Angeli.
Sayad, A.
2004 The Suffering of the Immigrant, Polity Press.
Wolkowitz, C.
2006 Bodies at Work, SAGE Publications.
Convenors’ bio
Veronica Buffon is a researcher for the project InMigHealth: Investigating Migrants’ Occupational Health at the University of Messina where she also teaches courses in Anthropology. Veronica’s broad research interests and long-term ethnographic fieldworks in the Middle East and Italy are in the field of health, care and conflict; inequalities and medicine; gender, kinship, and violence; forced migration. She completed her PhD at the University of Exeter with a thesis on Kurdish women, conflict, health and well-being (Diyarbakir/Amed, Turkey). More recently, Veronica has contributed to two research projects: Unfamiliar Families: Syrian Refugees’ Transnational Solidarity and Kinship Networks and Forced Migration, Digital Technology and Health.
Camilla De Ambroggi is an anthropologist currently conducting postdoctoral research in the Department of Sociology at the University of Padua, focusing on occupational health among migrant agricultural workers and domestic workers in residential care facilities. Previously, she completed her doctoral research investigating the relationship between neo-extractivist processes, progressive governments, and Indigenous struggles in Latin America.