The importance of absence in the present: practices of remembrance and the contestation of absences

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.What is missing, where and for whom? And how does that which is absent relate to the things and people that are present? This special issue of cultural geographies demonstrates the relevance of absence in its social and spatial dimensions. By focusing on that which does not claim physical presence, that which is missing or hiding, this issue demonstrates how an in-depth examination of the phenomenon of absence can provide stimulating vectors of analysis

Providing medical care for undocumented migrants in Denmark: what are the challenges for health professionals?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The rights of undocumented migrants are frequently overlooked. Denmark has ratified several international conventions recognizing the right to health care for all human beings, but has very scanty legislation and no existing policies for providing health care to undocumented migrants. This study focuses on how health professionals navigate and how they experience providing treatment for undocumented migrants in the Danish health care system.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study was carried out as part of an EU-project on European Best Practices in Access, Quality and Appropriateness of Health Services for Immigrants in Europe (EUGATE). This presentation is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with general practitioners (9) and emergency room physicians (3) in Denmark.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The emergency room physicians express that treatment of undocumented migrants is no different from the treatment of any other person. However, care may become more complicated due to lack of previous medical records and contact persons. Contrary to this, general practitioners explain that undocumented migrants will encounter formal barriers when trying to obtain treatment. Additional problems in the treatment of undocumented migrants include language issues, financial aspects for general practitioners, concerns about how to handle the situation including possibilities of further referrals, and an uncertainty as to whether to involve the police.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The health professionals in our study describe that undocumented migrants experience an unequal access to primary care facilities and that great uncertainties exist amongst health professionals as how to respond in such situations. The lack of official policies concerning the right to health care for undocumented migrants continue to pass on the responsibility to health professionals and, thereby, leaves it up to the individual to decide whether treatment can be obtained or not.</p

Ethnic inequalities in the incidence of diagnosis of severe mental illness in England: a systematic review and new meta-analyses for non-affective and affective psychoses.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-019-01758-yPURPOSE: Although excess risks particularly for a diagnosis of schizophrenia have been identified for ethnic minority people in England and other contexts, we sought to identify and synthesise up-to-date evidence (2018) for affective in addition to non-affective psychoses by specific ethnic groups in England. METHODS: Systematic review and meta-analysis of ethnic differences in diagnosed incidence of psychoses in England, searching nine databases for reviews (citing relevant studies up to 2009) and an updated search in three databases for studies between 2010 and 2018. Studies from both searches were combined in meta-analyses allowing coverage of more specific ethnic groups than previously. RESULTS: We included 28 primary studies. Relative to the majority population, significantly higher risks of diagnosed schizophrenia were found in Black African (Relative risk, RR 5.72, 95% CI 3.87-8.46, n = 9); Black Caribbean (RR 5.20, 95% CI 4.33-6.24, n = 21); South Asian (RR 2.27, 95% CI 1.63-3.16, n = 14); White Other (RR 2.24, 95% CI 1.59-3.14, n = 9); and Mixed Ethnicity people (RR 2.24, 95% CI 1.32-3.80, n = 4). Significantly higher risks for diagnosed affective psychoses were also revealed: Black African (RR 4.07, 95% CI 2.27-7.28, n = 5); Black Caribbean (RR 2.91, 95% CI 1.78-4.74, n = 16); South Asian (RR 1.71, 95% CI 1.07-2.72, n = 8); White Other (RR 1.55, 95% CI 1.32-1.83, n = 5); Mixed Ethnicity (RR 6.16, 95% CI 3.99-9.52, n = 4). CONCLUSIONS: The risk for a diagnosis of non-affective and affective psychoses is particularly elevated for Black ethnic groups, but is higher for all ethnic minority groups including those previously not assessed through meta-analyses (White Other, Mixed Ethnicity). This calls for further research on broader disadvantages affecting ethnic minority people.Lankelly Chase Foundatio

Damcyklisters energi- och vätskeintag

Strävan att tappa i vikt för att öka prestationsförmågan har blivit allt mer populärt hos elit- som motionscyklister. Genom att cykla med ett lågt energiintag i syfte att tappa kilon, har pressen ökat på cyklisten och en hög risk för osund viktproblematik växer fram i idrotten. Ofta skapar de sig en så hög kontroll och perfektionism inom de faktorer som har påverkan på deras prestationsförmåga att det istället kan leda till psykologiska svårigheter. En medveten livsstil leder till motsatt effekt. Syftet med studien är att undersöka en grupp damcyklisters energi- och vätskeintag under perioden då de inte tävlar. Energi- och vätskeintaget jämförs därefter i förhållande till SOK:s näringsrekommendationer gällande elitidrottare. En kostregistrering på fyra dagar genomfördes 2013 av en grupp damcyklister på sju deltagare, vilka har som mål att cykla Vättern runt på 8,15 timmar. Resultatet visar att majoriteten av deltagarna tillgodosåg sitt energiintag, både fett och protein var enligt rekommendationerna, men att de har ett kritiskt kolhydratintag. Jag kan inte med säkerhet redogöra för hur damcyklisters kunskap kring kost är, men upplever att denna uppsats ger en rättvis bild av den mindre grupp deltagare som valt att delta i studien på frivillig basis på grund av deras noggrannhet i registreringen. Av flera studier framgår tydligt att kunskap inom kost- och näringslära inte är tillräcklig hos cyklister. Även min uppsats påvisar detta genom att deltagarna registrerat ett lågt kolhydratintag

Presenting the Absent : An Account of Undocumentedness in Sweden

This thesis provides an ethnography and critical phenomenology of undocumentedness in the Swedish context. By attending to the forces and processes that circumscribe the life-worlds of undocumented persons, as well as the phenomenology and essential experiences of their condition, a complex and multi-layered illustration of what undocumentedness is and means is successively presented. Employing a dual conceptualization of the state, as a juridico-political construct as well as a practiced and embodied set of institutions, the undocumented position emerges as a legal category defined only through omission, produced and reproduced through administrative routine and practice. The health care sector provides empirical examples of state-undocumented interaction where the physical and corporeal presence of the officially absent becomes irrefutable. This research suggests that the Swedish welfare state – universalistic, comprehensive and with digitized administrative routines – becomes a particularly austere environment in which to be undocumented. Drawing on interviews with regional and local health care administrators, NGO-clinics’ representatives and health professionals, as well as extensive participatory observation and interviews with undocumented persons, I argue that the undocumented condition is characterized by simultaneous absence and presence, and a correspondingly paradoxical spatiality. I suggest that the official absence and deportability of undocumented persons deprives them of the capacity to define space and, in an Arendtian sense, appear as themselves to others. There are, however, some opportunities for embodied political protest and dissensus. The paradoxical qualities of the absent-present condition manipulate the undocumented mode of being-in-the-world and I argue that alienation and disorientation are essential experiences of the undocumented situation.

Papperslösas rätt till vård : Bristen på lagstiftning lägger stort ansvar på vårdpersonalen

Undocumented migrants in Sweden have no regulated access to health care, but as legislation forbids anyone to be denied “immediate” care at their own expense when in need, this applies also to them. In lack of specific national regulations, local policies on the issue have been formed. This study, based on interviews with civil servants on the local levels and representatives of NGO clinics as well as the study of relevant national legislation and local policies, concludes that the local policies formed may be categorized into three groups: regulations that merely clarify the implications of current national legislation, regulations that incorporates the group “undocumented migrants” in “asylum seekers” and equates their entitlements, and finally, regulations that widen undocumented migrants’ access to health care from ”immediate” care to also include ”immediately necessary” care. These ambiguities put a heavy responsibility on the individual practitioner, and clearer, well-communicated regulations would help solve this situation.Papperslösa i Sverige har ingen reglerad tillgång till sjukvård, men kan, enligt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen inte nekas osubventionerad ”omedelbar” vård. Denna studie, baserad på intervjuer med sjukhus- och landstingstjänstemän samt studium av relevant lagstiftning och riktlinjer, ger en översikt över hur frågan hanterats lokalt i brist på nationell lagstiftning. 17 av 21 landsting har formulerat riktlinjer i frågan vilka kan grupperas som: ”förtydliganden av lagen”, inkorporering av papperslösa i gruppen asylsökande samt utökning av papperslösas rätt till vård till ”omedelbart nödvändig vård”. Oklar reglering lägger stort ansvar på den enskilda vårdgivaren, och situationen skulle underlättas med tydligare, väl kommunicerade riktlinjer

Papperslösas rätt till vård : Bristen på lagstiftning lägger stort ansvar på vårdpersonalen

Undocumented migrants in Sweden have no regulated access to health care, but as legislation forbids anyone to be denied “immediate” care at their own expense when in need, this applies also to them. In lack of specific national regulations, local policies on the issue have been formed. This study, based on interviews with civil servants on the local levels and representatives of NGO clinics as well as the study of relevant national legislation and local policies, concludes that the local policies formed may be categorized into three groups: regulations that merely clarify the implications of current national legislation, regulations that incorporates the group “undocumented migrants” in “asylum seekers” and equates their entitlements, and finally, regulations that widen undocumented migrants’ access to health care from ”immediate” care to also include ”immediately necessary” care. These ambiguities put a heavy responsibility on the individual practitioner, and clearer, well-communicated regulations would help solve this situation.Papperslösa i Sverige har ingen reglerad tillgång till sjukvård, men kan, enligt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen inte nekas osubventionerad ”omedelbar” vård. Denna studie, baserad på intervjuer med sjukhus- och landstingstjänstemän samt studium av relevant lagstiftning och riktlinjer, ger en översikt över hur frågan hanterats lokalt i brist på nationell lagstiftning. 17 av 21 landsting har formulerat riktlinjer i frågan vilka kan grupperas som: ”förtydliganden av lagen”, inkorporering av papperslösa i gruppen asylsökande samt utökning av papperslösas rätt till vård till ”omedelbart nödvändig vård”. Oklar reglering lägger stort ansvar på den enskilda vårdgivaren, och situationen skulle underlättas med tydligare, väl kommunicerade riktlinjer

Papperslösas rätt till vård : Bristen på lagstiftning lägger stort ansvar på vårdpersonalen

Undocumented migrants in Sweden have no regulated access to health care, but as legislation forbids anyone to be denied “immediate” care at their own expense when in need, this applies also to them. In lack of specific national regulations, local policies on the issue have been formed. This study, based on interviews with civil servants on the local levels and representatives of NGO clinics as well as the study of relevant national legislation and local policies, concludes that the local policies formed may be categorized into three groups: regulations that merely clarify the implications of current national legislation, regulations that incorporates the group “undocumented migrants” in “asylum seekers” and equates their entitlements, and finally, regulations that widen undocumented migrants’ access to health care from ”immediate” care to also include ”immediately necessary” care. These ambiguities put a heavy responsibility on the individual practitioner, and clearer, well-communicated regulations would help solve this situation.Papperslösa i Sverige har ingen reglerad tillgång till sjukvård, men kan, enligt hälso- och sjukvårdslagen inte nekas osubventionerad ”omedelbar” vård. Denna studie, baserad på intervjuer med sjukhus- och landstingstjänstemän samt studium av relevant lagstiftning och riktlinjer, ger en översikt över hur frågan hanterats lokalt i brist på nationell lagstiftning. 17 av 21 landsting har formulerat riktlinjer i frågan vilka kan grupperas som: ”förtydliganden av lagen”, inkorporering av papperslösa i gruppen asylsökande samt utökning av papperslösas rätt till vård till ”omedelbart nödvändig vård”. Oklar reglering lägger stort ansvar på den enskilda vårdgivaren, och situationen skulle underlättas med tydligare, väl kommunicerade riktlinjer

Om Sverige, svenskhet och de Andra i samhällsorientering för nyanlända

Samhällsorienteringskurser erbjuds nyanlända flyktingar för att ge dem grundläggande kunskap om Sverige och det svenska samhället. Syftet med Kim Silow Kallenberg och Erika Sigvardsdotters artikel är att analysera de bilder av Sverige, svenskhet och de Andra som framträder i kursernas undervisningsmaterial. Utifrån en narrativ ansats undersöks både berättelser och tystnader i materialet, där det som inte är uttalat förstås som en aspekt av berättelsen om Sverige och svenskheten. Materialet är både informativt och normerande, det beskriver både vad som är vanligt och vad som är önskvärt. Skrivningar om omständigheter där utrikesfödda kan bli förfördelade saknas i hög grad, samtidigt som sammanhang där utrikesfödda skulle kunna diskriminera eller skada någon annan beskrivs utförligt. Materialet kan därför tolkas som att det i första hand utgår från majoritetsbefolkningens perspektiv och behov, trots att det riktar sig till nyanländ

Parenthood after forced migration : A literature review

Parenting after forced migration carries specific challenges, especially during the first years – difficulties and trauma related to migration, adjusting to a new language, new norms and expectations, and leading a transnational life. This presentation is based on a literature review, with the aim to gather and synthesise existing research concerning the conditions for and experiences of parenthood among newly arrived forced migrants. Searches were conducted in Pubmed, Sociology collection and PsychInfo. In total, 27 articles were included. The result is reported as themes categorized as strengths and challenges for newly arrived parents. Themes under the category strengths are: health and social service, new possibilities, establishing oneself, and networks and family. In the category challenges are found: health, establishing oneself, socioeconomic status, and social networks and relationships. The importance of accurate information about, and access to, health care and social service where the specific situation of this group is taken into account was stressed. New possibilities relating to education and living in peace and freedom may arise from seeking refuge in a new country. However, many newly arrived parents have poor socioeconomic status. Worries relating to the migration process and residence status may make parenting more difficult. Family life and social networks are stressed as important factors for parenting. Supporting parents who have recently fled must involve both practical support, information and help with orientation in the new society, alongside established parental support programmes