ABSTRACT
Drawing on detailed interviews with 60 recent migrants to Ireland, we discuss the extent and nature of patient mobility. The paper is framed by the typology of patient mobility outlined by Glinos et al. (2010), which highlights patient motivation and funding. We pay particular attention to four key areas: availability of health care for migrants living in Ireland; affordability of care as a push factor for patient mobility; how migrants' perceptions of care affect their decision about where to avail of care; and the impact of familiarity on patient mobility. We provide empirical support for this typology. However, our research also highlights the fact that two factors - availability and familiarity - require further elaboration. Our research demonstrates the need for greater levels of awareness of culture specificity on the part of both migrants and healthcare providers. It also highlights the need to investigate the social and spatial activities of migrants seeking health care, both within and beyond national boundaries.
Subject(s)
Health Services Accessibility , Patient Acceptance of Health Care , Transients and Migrants/psychology , Delivery of Health Care/economics , Humans , Interviews as Topic , Ireland , Quality of Health CareABSTRACT
Medical tourism in Ireland, like in many Western states, is built around assumptions about individual agency, choice, possibility, and mobility. One specific form of medical tourismthe flow of women from Ireland traveling in order to secure an abortiondisrupts and contradicts these assumptions. One legacy of the bitter, contentious political and legal battles surrounding abortion in Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s has been securing the right of mobility for all pregnant Irish citizens to cross international borders to secure an abortion. However, these mobility rights are contingent upon nationality, social class, and race, and they have enabled successive Irish governments to avoid any responsibility for providing safe, legal, and affordable abortion services in Ireland. Nearly twenty years after the X case discussed here, the pregnant female body moving over international bordersentering and leaving the stateis still interpreted as problematic and threatening to the Irish state.