Ethnopolitics of risk and vulnerability

Citation

Watters, C. (2012), "Ethnopolitics of risk and vulnerability", International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Vol. 8 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmhsc.2012.54808aaa.001

Ethnopolitics of risk and vulnerability

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, Volume 8, Issue 1

In addressing issues of health and social care in relation to migrant populations, scholars and service providers are often understandably concerned with practical matters of service implementation and service evaluation. Put another way, there is often and overarching orientation towards issues of identification of migrants needs and appropriate implementation informed by epidemiological research and the evaluation of services. An aspect of research that is often missing here is engagement with the formulation and generation of theory. An overwhelming concern with the empirical, with the tangible processes in health and social services can be felt and this orientation is all too scarcely informed by theoretical concerns. The “problem spaces” occupied by migrant populations are subject to thin descriptions circumscribed often by limited policy-oriented agendas. Within this context scholars have noted a certain “circularity” whereby research is commissioned and findings emerge within narrow and predictable parameters. There is, so to speak, little scope for “thinking outside the box”.

The present collection offers a welcome corrective to this tendency. It centers around key theoretical concerns in the formation and delivery of services to migrant populations and is oriented towards deep exploration of the theoretical basis of services for migrants. The papers specifically address two salient issues in the literature on migrant health risk and vulnerability. This unique collection draws from the papers presented at a recent European conference and is concerned with the ways in which migrant populations are identified as occupying particular problem spaces requiring health and social care interventions. The collection challenges service providers to develop a critical reflexivity towards their practice, encouraging them to not only develop nuanced and informed practice towards migrant populations but to interrogate the very health and social care categories into which migrants are placed.

Charles Watters