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Pathogenic camps, therapeutic city? Roma, healthcare, and the negotiation of citizenship rights in Rome

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  • Alunni, Lorenzo

Abstract

While equality in healthcare implementation constitutes one of the precepts of the European Roma inclusion programs, health disparities are still one of the most problematic areas contributing to the marginality of residents in ‘Roma camps’. The implementation of the right to health and access to healthcare services and resources represents a major challenge in their everyday experience. If we consider citizenship as a set of natural and legal rights to be protected as a symbolic and material link between a nation-state and a subject either born there or formally belonging to its national community, healthcare emerges as a technology of government where such rights are challenged, limited, or denied. Based on an ethnographic work on the role of public healthcare in ‘Roma camps’, this contribution focuses on contemporary topographies of health in the city of Rome through the lens of Roma marginalization within its urban spaces. How do camps residents experience the city through their relationship with its healthcare resources? And how does the healthcare system become a powerful tool of exclusion? Healthcare access in an urban context is an illustration of the dialectics of political power, knowledge, and expertise as a crucial factor in the administration of marginalized groups. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on precarity in the urban healthcare landscape, and on what living in a ‘Roma camp’ means in terms of healthcare. Both dimensions interrogate citizenship as a set of rightful entitlements that includes access to state-provided medical services.

Suggested Citation

  • Alunni, Lorenzo, 2021. "Pathogenic camps, therapeutic city? Roma, healthcare, and the negotiation of citizenship rights in Rome," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:289:y:2021:i:c:s027795362100753x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114421
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Monasta, L. & Andersson, N. & Ledogar, R.J. & Theol, D. & Cockcroft, A., 2008. "Minority health and small numbers epidemiology: A case study of living conditions and the health of children in 5 foreign Romá camps in Italy," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 98(11), pages 2035-2041.
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