EU Governance of Forced Migration: Impacts on Health (and) Equity

Forced migrants and refugees are among the most marginalised communities. They have long faced discrimination and challenges accessing healthcare as well as other services and facilities required to lead a healthy life. Amidst the multiple ‘crises’ the EU is facing – from COVID-19, to the war in Ukraine and the so-called 2015 ‘migration crisis’ – health and migration have become highly politicised topics. Arguably, this ‘crisis’ mode is leading to a proliferation of provisions for exceptional measures, both in health and migration governance, with the establishment of new health security and emergency response institutions, and the recently agreed upon exceptional measures of the common European asylum and migration policy. In this In Conversationevent, the speakers will discuss EU governance of migration and its implications for health (and) equity. The discussion will explore legal and institutional structures that determine forced migrants’ access to healthcare in the multilevel governance relation between the EU and its member states. Recognising the need to think about health beyond healthcare, it will also offer insights on how migration policies and governing rationalities affect the health and wellbeing of this community in a broader way, including through processes of marginalisation and de-humanisation. At the same time, health discourses can also contribute to bordering practices, particularly in the context of heightened health securitisation. The discussion will combine legal-institutional perspectives with insights on the role of ideational politics, norms and language, and dynamics of politicisation. 

Dr Tamara Tubakovic is a Fellow in Public Policy and Administration at the LSE. She holds a PhD in Political Science, awarded in 2021 from the University of Melbourne. Before coming to the LSE, Tamara was a Teaching Fellow in Public Policy and European Studies at the University of Warwick, and Research Coordinator of the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet network, The Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies, at the University of Melbourne. Her research intersects the fields of public policy, European Union politics, and refugee and border studies. Her work focuses on the institutional politics of EU asylum policy reform; the role of ideas and policy narratives in shaping asylum policies in Europe and Australia; and the role of the executive in the governance of migration. 

Dr Mechthild Roos is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Augsburg, Germany. One of her research agendas explores the political regulation (and increasing politicisation) of forced migrants’ access to health and healthcare across Europe, focusing on the informal dimension of EU politics, especially in times of (poly)crisis; on the activism of EU supranational institutions; and on the evolution of a European social dimension. Her work is located at the intersection of Political Science and History and seeks fruitful combination of political science and historiographical concepts, theories and methods. She is a co-moderator of the blog hosting service Ideas on Europe, and a co-editor of the new De Gruyter book series ‘Europe under Strain‘. 

The event will last 60 minutes, including a Q&A session, and will be chaired by Dr Charlotte Godziewski (City University, London).