Module Content

This course is designed for medical and social anthropology students interested in the health challenges of migrant populations, and in particular those populations experiencing health inequity and related vulnerabilities. The scope of lectures and discussions provide an opportunity to consider key themes within the core discipline of medical anthropology and migration studies.     

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course students will have advanced their learning in the following core health and migration subjects:

The Anthropology of Culture and Health
 Refugee Health and Statelessness
 Stigma, Invasive Others, and Migrant Health
 Health Inequity and Health Equality
 Ideology and Migration: Immunity and Infectious Disease
 Extreme Events and Migration
 Sociocultural Determinants of Migrant Health
 Migrant Vulnerability
Teaching Methods

The course is taught weekly throughout term as a two-hour seminar. The first hour is a lecture format. The second hour is devoted to student-led discussions around key required and optional readings. All students present twice during the term and work in groups prior to their presentations. Students submit an essay proposal at the end of the class and receive feedback before writing the final marked essay.

Additional Information

Key texts:

Abubakar, Ibrahim, et al. 2018. ‘The UCL–Lancet Commission on Migration and Health: The Health of a World on the Move’. The Lancet 392 (10164): 2606–54.
 Adams, Vicanne. 2013. Markets of Sorrow, Labors of Faith: New Orleans in the Wake of Katrina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
 Anderson Bridget. 2017. ‘The Politics of Pests: Immigration and the Invasive Other’. In The Invasive Other. Social Research 84 (1).
 Arendt, Hannah. 1951. ‘The decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man’. In The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Schocken Books.
 Bourgois, Philipe,et al. 2017. ‘Structural Vulnerability: Operationalizing the Concept to Address Health Disparities in Clinical Care.” Acad Med 92(3):299307.
 Castañeda, Heide, et al. (2015) “Immigration as a Social Determinant of Health’. Annual Review of Public Health 36: 375392.
 Costello, Anthony, et al. 2009. ‘Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change’. The Lancet 373 (9676): 1693–1733.
 Fassin, Didier. 2007. ‘Humanitarianism as a Politics of Life’. Public Culture, 19 (3): 499-520.
 Holmes, Seth. (2013). Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 Kleinman, Arthur, and Peter Benson. 2006. ‘Anthropology in the clinic: the problem of cultural competency and how to ﬁx it’. PLoS Medicine 3(10): e294.
 Lyytinen, Eveliina. 2017. ‘Informal places of protection: Congolese refugees’ ‘communities of trust’ in Kampala, Uganda’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 43 (6): 991-1008.
 Marmot, Michael et al. 2008. Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. World Health Organization.
 Metzl, Jonathan, and Helena Hansen. 2014. ‘Structural competency: Theorizing a new medical engagement with stigma and inequality’. Social Science & Medicine 103: 126133.
 Napier, A. David. 2017. ‘Epidemics and Xenophobia, or, Why Xenophilia Matters’. In The Invasive Other, Social Research 84 (1).
 Napier, A. David, et al. 2014. ‘Culture and Health’. The Lancet 384 (9954): 1607–39.
 Ong, Aihwa. 1995. ‘Making the biopolitical subject: Cambodian immigrants, refugee medicine and cultural citizenship in California’. Social Science and Medicine 40 (9): 1243-1257.
 Pickett, Kate and Wilkinson, Richard. 2010. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone. London: Penguin.
 Quesada, James, Laurie K.Hart, and Philippe Bourgois. 2011. ‘Structural vulnerability and health: Latino migrant laborers in the United States’. Medical Anthropology 30(4): 339 362.
 Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Ticktin, Miriam. 2006. ‘Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France’. American Ethnologist 33 (1) Feb: 33-49.
 Wikan, Unni. 1990. Managing Turbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
 Wilkinson, A., Parker, M., Martineau, F., & Leach, M. 2017. ‘Engaging “communities”: Anthropological insights from the west African Ebola epidemic’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 372( 1721).