Events

This workshop is organised by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore; with support from the School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia.

Although travelling across nations and crossing borders to seek medical care is not new, the rapidly increasing volume and velocity of medical travel at the turn of the 21st century soon raised its international profile and visibility. Especially with the emergence of the medical tourism industry, contemporary international medical travel expanded considerably as private hospitals stepped up their marketing to reach patient-consumers overseas and new businesses that sought to facilitate cross-country utilization of medical care proliferated.

In tandem with the growth of the phenomenon, medical travel/tourism as a field of research has also grown rapidly, with recent works encompassing ethnographic studies of patients’ experiences and subjectivities in the context of diverse types of medical travel as well as critical studies of international medical travel as a form of engagement embedded within struggles for access and rights to health care, as a reflection of shifting geographies of care and responsibility, and as forms of interactive encounter at the bodily, local and national scales, shaped by processes of globalization.

This workshop aims to provide a platform for discussing empirical and conceptual works on international medical travel in the context of the politics of transnational mobilities in Asia. Viewing Asia as a region of diverse and dynamic transnational mobilities, we are interested in papers that explore the ways in which international medical travel has developed in the region, the local, national and regional mechanisms that both impede and aid international medical travel, and the negotiations and contestations that accompany it.

We recognize that while international medical travel encompasses a range of different types of patient flows, and although the term ‘medical tourism’ often conjures up the idea of people travelling vast distances for medical care, the major flows are by and large intra-regional, often initiated because of the lack (or inaccessibility) of treatment facilities in the patients’ own countries. International medical travel therefore cross-cuts with people’s everyday realities, with different types of mobilities and bounded-ness, and with institutional processes in local, national, regional, as well as societal contexts.

While open to different theoretical approaches, we highlight the following which may provide useful starting points for empirical analysis:

1) Transnational studies have fruitfully re-conceptualized migration and migrants’ realities within transnational social fields that do not coincide with national boundaries. While medical travelers are not conventionally regarded as migrants, conceptualizing international medical travel as a transnational social field may serve to reveal the depth and extent of social relations, networks and institutions that underpin this phenomenon.

2) In modern life, access to health care is a crucial part of life and social security. The ways in which health care is accessed and utilized as part of everyday life constitute an important part of social reproduction. Are there ways in which international medical travel contribute to social reproduction that are distinct from, or that distorts, the social reproductive role of locally accessed and utilized health care? Conversely, how may international medical travel contribute to social transformation?

3) Sustaining international medical travel as practice, as an industry, or even as a country export, involves processes of institutionalization that diverge from established conventions in healthcare provision and utilization. What are the ideas, practices, and processes that contribute to the institutionalizing of international medical travel and its cultural reproduction?

4) Locating international medical travel in society necessarily calls for an examination of societal responses, from both host and sending societies. These societal responses range from solidarity and sympathy on the one hand, to resistance and hostility on the other. How do they play out in relations at various levels – individual, organizational, local, and national – and to what extent do they shape the shifting landscape of limits and opportunities in the provision of health and medical care?

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. Please indicate your interest to attend by dropping a note to Sharon at arios@nus.edu.sg.

CONTACT DETAILS

Workshop Convenors

Dr CHEE Heng Leng
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Professor Brenda SA YEOH
Asia Research Institute, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

Associate Professor Andrea WHITTAKER
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia

Secretariat

Miss Sharon ONG
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
E | arios@nus.edu.sg