Title: Medico-legal borders and the shaping of health services for Afghans in Iran: physical, social, bureaucratic, and public health conditions of care

Authors: Laura Bisaillon; Ehsan Shamsi Gooshki; Linda Briskman

Addresses: Health Studies Program, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada ' Medical Ethics and History of Medicine Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, #23-16 Azar Street, Keshavarz Boulevard, Tehran, 1417633114, Iran ' Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Mail H53, P.O. Box 218, Hawthorn Vic 3122, Australia

Abstract: We report findings from an interdisciplinary scoping exercise carried out in Tehran and Qom, Iran, in August 2014. Our analysis is organised within the four themes of physical, social, bureaucratic, and public health conditions of care, and this work connects with and contributes to what is known about the social conditions of Afghans in Iran. Through this exploratory exercise, we aimed to generate new understandings about issues facing Afghans in healthcare settings in Iran from their perspectives and those of other actors in Iran. This project emerged from concerns about prejudicial treatment of Afghans in clinical settings. We argue and illustrate that an ethics of care approach provides a conceptually and contextually relevant way to develop understandings about and to transform contexts of care. We conclude by anticipating next steps in our research process by building on insights and knowledge produced through this scoping exercise and the tentative analysis that it proffered.

Keywords: Afghans; Afgan migrants; Iran; anthropology of health; applied ethics; critical studies; feminist ethics; Islamic duties; Islamic responsibilities; materialist inquiry; medico-legal borderlands; migration; political economy of health; health politics; healthcare politics; sociology of health; public health services; physical care; social care; bureaucracy; care conditions; social conditions; prejudicial treatment; clinical settings; immigration; Islam.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMBS.2016.074637

International Journal of Migration and Border Studies, 2016 Vol.2 No.1, pp.40 - 58

Received: 01 Apr 2015
Accepted: 08 Jun 2015
Published online: 10 Feb 2016 *

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