Migrant women’s negotiation of belonging through therapeutic relationships

Embodied Belonging: In/exclusion, Health Care, and Well-Being in a World in Motion

In this introduction, we propose the notion of 'embodied belonging' as a fruitful analytical heuristic for scholars in medical and psychological anthropology. We envision this notion to help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements of the political, social, and affective dimensions of belonging and their effects on health, illness, and healing. A focus on embodied belonging, we argue, reveals how displacement, exclusion, and marginalization cause existential and health-related ruptures in people's lives and bodies, and how affected people, in the struggle for re/emplacement and re/integration, may regain health and sustain their well-being. Covering a variety of regional contexts (Germany/Vietnam, Norway, the UK, Japan), the contributions to this special issue examine how embodied non/belonging is experienced, re/imagined, negotiated, practiced, disrupted, contested, and achieved (or not) by their protagonists, who are excluded and marginalized in diverse ways. Each article highlights the intricate trajectories of how dynamics of non/belonging inscribe themselves in human bodies. They also reveal how belonging can be utilized and drawn on as a forceful means and resource of social resilience, if not (self-)therapy and healing.

Racism in European Health Care: Structural Violence and Beyond

Research shows how racism can negatively affect access to health care and treatment. However, limited theoretical research exists on conceptualizing racism in health care. In this article, we use structural violence as a theoretical tool to understand how racism as an institutionalized social structure is enacted in subtle ways and how the "violence" built into forms of social organization is rendered invisible through repetition and routinization. We draw on interviews with health care users from three European countries, namely, Sweden, Germany, and Portugal to demonstrate how two interrelated processes of unequal access to resources and inequalities in power can lead to the silencing of suffering and erosion of dignity, respectively. The strength of this article lies in illuminating the mechanisms of subtle racism that damages individuals and leads to loss of trust in health care. It is imperative to address these issues to ensure a responsive and equal health care for all users.