Critical Ethnographic Perspectives on Medical Travel

By taking an ethnographic approach to medical travel, this important book uses critical perspectives to understand inequalities in healthcare access and delivery, including gender, class and ethnicity, and explore how these are negotiated. In this key text Vindrola- Padros presents a comprehensive overview of the work carried out on this topic to date, highlights the gaps that remain and suggests strategies for enriching medical travel research in the future. Drawing from the author’s research on internal medical travel to access pediatric oncology treatment in Buenos Aires, Argentina and other research from across the globe, this book presents four dimensions of medical travel that can be explored through a critical (im)mobilities lens: infrastructures, differential mobility empowerments, culture and affective dimensions of care and travel. Vindrola-Padros encourages the reader to critically explore processes of medical travel by considering the structures that shape travel, individual capacities for travel, the role emotions play in decisions and experiences of movement and service delivery and the ways in which culture(s) influence both travel and care. This book will be important reading for scholars across medical sociology, anthropology and critical health studies.