Talieh Mirsalehi will defend the thesis in ethnology at Lund University Health in Negotiation: Cultural Analytical Perspectives on Health and Inequalities in the Swedish Asylum Context on 24 May 2024. Opponent is Jenny Gunnarsson Payne.

The thesis can be found here.

Summary:

Health inequalities are a persistent and growing issue in different countries worldwide. Sweden, despite being one of the scandinavian countries with internationally recognized welfare system is no exception. The issue of health disparities and its increase among some groups, including those who are categorised as migrant have been acknowledged. Emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, revealed the gravity of the situation when groups of people who had migrated to Sweden from countries mainly within Africa and the Middle East were on the frontline experiencing disproportionate impacts of the Coronavirus. Although the effect of structural factors on health vulnerabilities among these groups have been identified, there is still little knowledge about how individuals who are placed into migrant categories have experienced and responded to health risks caused by the pandemic. This dissertation aims to provide a cultural analytical account of the ways in which people who undergo an asylum process in Sweden relate to, navigate, and negotiate health. By empirically investigating a group of asylum seekers’ perceptions of health, body, and risk, this study demonstrates how the participants make meaning of their embodied experiences of generating health and practicing self-care while living in a transitional state. In a health care landscape where taking responsibility for one’s health is a sociocultural norm, protecting health and preserving body is seen as a moral percept, expected from all members of society. Disparities in health, from this view, may be perceived as avoidable by leading a healthy way of life and avoiding exposure to health risks. By focusing on a group of asylum seekers’ experiences of navigating health and care before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden, this study reveals how perceptions and practices of health and care are situational, contextual, and negotiable in relation to the conditions within asylum processes. While being expected to actively participate in the society they want to be a part of, those who joined this study revealed how uncertainties about the state of their ‘at-risk’ bodies clash with performances of membership.While making meaning of notions of health and care in the new society and turning it to projects of familiarization, those who joined this study shared challenges of building a fit and equally immune body that matches new parameters of health and well-being under unqual circumstances. However, it may not be translated as passivity and lack of initiation among ‘vulnerable’ groups when it comes to generating health. The notions of health, care, risk, and immunity, from this perspective, are boundary concepts and open to interpretation. In order to access the experiences, perceptions and practices of health among ‘inaccessible’ migrant populations, more emphasis needs to be put on methodological considerations in health research among different groups.