The Migration and Global Health workshop encompassed two packed days in Berlin, Germany from December 16th-December 17th, 2022. Organized by Professors Seth Holmes (UC Berkeley), Regina Romhild (Humboldt U Berlin), Hansjörg Dilger (Freie U Berlin), and Ulrike Kluge (Charite U Medicine Berlin), the group discussed decoloniality, postmigrancy, and racialization in global health and medicine, and how to approach these topics moving forward. Participants were invited from all fields and experiences to take part in the workshop, as well as a panel discussion on the evening of the 16th, and an art talk by Kader Attia at Savvy Contemporary on the evening of the 17th. The workshop aimed to dissect current framings of a ‘decolonial’ or ‘postcolonial’ global health approach that still do not sufficiently acknowledge the negative impact of global and national health regimes on migrants and refugees. The movements of migrant and refugee populations across borders and their presence in the global North and global South conflict with health systems that prioritize the provision of care for national citizens. Thus, additional exclusions and hierarchies of deservingness are produced and multiple racialized distinctions are perpetuated, testifying to an overall continuity of structural racism in the Global Health context. This includes, among others, hierarchies of language and dominant conceptualizations of health that maintain the separation and inequities of situated knowledge in this field. For the December 16th panel, participants Tinashe Goronga, Seth Holmes, Mirielle Ngosso, and Vivien-Lee Greiwe were able to provide detailed recounts of rich life experiences that have dictated their multidimensional career and education trajectories, and an engrossed public audience at the Charité School of Medicine joined in the lively conversation at the end of the evening. The workshop culminated in the drafting of an article by the DAAD-funded group intended for publication during 2023 in a top global health journal.
Participants
Amal Abass (tubman network, Coalition of Black organisations and individuals, entrepreneur, concept developer in the field of social innovations, inclusion, community art, social work, counseling and creative transcultural therapies)
Roman Bakuradze (MA Eastern European Studies, Amaro Drom e.V., intercultural youth self-organization of Rom*nja and non-Rom*nja, Educational consultant Ekhipe - Gemeinsam)
(roman.bakuradze@amarodrom.de)
Hansjörg Dilger (Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Research Area Medical Anthropology I Global Health; Critical Medical Anthropology (esp. Globalization of Health and Medicine, Anthropology of Epidemics, Health and Migration)
Raphael Frankfurter (PhD in Medical Anthropology, also MD Candidate UCSF, Founder, Well Body Initiative)
(Raphael.Frankfurter@ucsf.edu)
Jérémy Geeraert (Université Paris Saclay, National Centre for Scientific Research, Centre for Sociological Research on Law and Criminal Justice Institutions, PostDoc Researcher CrimScapes: Navigating citizenship through European landscapes of criminalisation)
Tinashe Goronga (MD, medical doctor and public health specialist; Center for Health Equity Zimbabwe CHEZ; EqualHealth Global Campaign Against Racism - Equalhealth CAR)
Seth M. Holmes (PhD, MD, Founder and Co-Chair, Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, Co-Director, Medical Anthropology MD/PhD Track, Faculty, Center for Global Public Health, Institute for European Studies, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative, University of California, Berkeley)
Iris Hunger (Dr., Robert Koch Institute, Deputy Head of the Centre for International Health Protection (ZIG), Coordinator of the Decolonization of Global Health Activities)
Margret Jaeger (Mag.a Dr.in, Wissenschaftsabteilung AWZ Soziales Wien GmbH, international trainer for health workers and in health professionals’ education; research interests: violence against health professionals in hospitals, health promotion for different target groups, women’s health
Ulrike Kluge (Prof. Dr. Dipl. Psych., Research Group Transcultural Psychiatry and Global Mental Health at Charité University Medicine Berlin, CCM and Department of Migration, Physical and Mental Health and Health Promotion at the Berlin Institute for empirical Integration and Migration Research at Humboldt University Berlin)
Lucia Mair (University of Vienna, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, PhD candidate; research interests: (Critical) anthropology of health and illness, Global and planetary health, Gender and medicine; trained as a medical doctor)
Nassim Mehran (Dr., BIM, Humboldt University of Berlin and Center for Cross-Cultural Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (ZIPP) at Charité University (CCM). She is an Urban Sociologist and Architect, based in Berlin. Her research focus: (Mental) Health Care, Settlement, and Migration, Spatial Justice and Social Inequalities)
(nassimmehran@gmail.com, nassim.mehran@alumni.hu-berlin.de)
Mireille Ngosso (Dr. med., assistant physician at Hietzing hospital, Vienna; Member of the Federal State Parliament, Vienna and Member of the Municipal Council Committee for Health and Social Affairs)
Maimouna Ouattara (Board member of moveGLOBAL - Umbrella association for organisations in the field of migrant-diasporic empowerment in Berlin, Promoter for the Strengthening of Migrant Civil Society in Berlin at One World Promotores’ Program)
Jillian Pape (UC Berkeley School of Public Health, MPH student in Global Health and Environment, Student Assistant to Seth Holmes)
Denisz Petrovity (Medical professional, Amaro Drom e.V., intercultural youth self-organization of Rom*nja and non-Rom*nja, project leader Ekhipe - Gemeinsam)
(denisz.petrovity@amarodrom.de)
Ursula Probst (Dr. phil., Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Postdoc Researcher in the Research Area Medical Anthropology I Global Health, MoRePPaR; research interests: gender and sexualities, body, (labor) migration)
Jaleel Plummer (Joint PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology, focusing on the black lived experience, mobility, mental health, and surveillance in England and Jamaica, University of California, Berkeley)
Regina Römhild (Prof. at Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Humboldt-Universität, critical migration studies, postcolonial anthropology of europe; research labs migration and critical europeanization studies)
(regina.roemhild@hu-berlin.de)
Hannah Strohmeier (Dr., at Institut für Tropenmedizin und Internationale Gesundheit, AG Racism and Mental Health, Coordinator of the Postgraduate Study Programme "International Health" at Charité)
(Hannah.strohmeier@charite.de)
Ricarda Theobald (Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, HU Berlin, Doctoral Fellow Minor Cosmopolitanisms)
(ricarda.theobald@hu-berlin.de)
Elisa Virnau (Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, HU Berlin, Student Assistant)
Levi Vonk (Joint PhD Candidate in Medical Anthropology, focused on Central American & Mexican im/migration, deportation, trafficking, social movements, im/migration law, border theory, (non)humanitarianism, University of California, Berkeley)