{"id":53138,"date":"2012-01-05T08:09:49","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T13:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=53138"},"modified":"2012-01-10T08:38:50","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T13:38:50","slug":"the-right-to-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/01\/the-right-to-health-care\/","title":{"rendered":"The Right to Health Care"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sarah<\/a>
Sarah Willen, assistant professor of anthropology. (Daniel Buttrey\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Should undocumented immigrants be entitled to health care? And if so, on what grounds?<\/p>\n

That simple but fraught question forms a central focus of Sarah Willen\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

Since 2000, Willen, an assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been investigating the recent phenomenon of undocumented migration to Tel Aviv, Israel, from countries as distant as Nigeria, Ghana, and the Philippines. Today, these undocumented residents comprise more than 150,000 of the country\u2019s 7.5 million inhabitants.<\/p>\n

While there, watching the everyday struggles of these migrants, she learned that not all reasons to give care \u2013 or not to \u2013 are the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an assumption that we\u2019re not obliged to provide care because these individuals have done something illegal,\u201d Willen says. \u201cWe have to start by rethinking our everyday assumptions about \u2018illegality\u2019 and, at the same time, considering what it would mean to organize society in a way that treats health care as a basic right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of health care as a basic human right is often based on an assumption of biolegitimacy, or the recognition that all humans are entitled to live and to be healthy. But in practice, Willen says, the \u201cright to health\u201d is a lot more complicated: whether it should be a legal instrument, a framework for policy, or simply a moral understanding is often unclear.<\/p>\n

And in the case of undocumented migrants, she notes, there is often a raging debate about whether or not they are “deserving.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Willen finds fascinating about Israel, especially in comparison with the U.S., is that health care has historically been a social contract, or part of what Israelis expect the government to provide in exchange for their contributions to society.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, people who care about undocumented migrants\u2019 health are basically just saying look, we already have a strong public commitment to health for all as a public good \u2013 and \u2018all\u2019 includes undocumented migrants,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

These types of arguments typically don\u2019t fly in the U.S., because unlike education, libraries, roads, and bridges, health care is not something Americans expect their government to provide.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, most Americans treat health care primarily as something to be bought and sold, not unlike tomatoes, or sweaters, or haircuts,\u201d explains Willen. \u201cGiven this commodity mentality, most Americans don\u2019t have an intuitive sense \u2013 as do Israelis and many Western Europeans \u2013 that health is a public good.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key site for Willen’s research is a Tel Aviv clinic that provides health care to the city\u2019s migrant population. The open clinic, run by an Israeli health and human rights organization, includes volunteer doctors and activists who, Willen discovered, all had different reasons for participating. Some believed that health care was a basic human right, some wanted Israel\u2019s immigration laws to change, and others just couldn\u2019t bear to see people suffer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fascinated by what the Israeli migrant advocates were doing in the community,\u201d she says. \u201cThey all framed their struggles and goals differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

One doctor, for example, came to volunteer in the clinic because she wanted to help Palestinians still in Israel, but then stayed because she realized that undocumented workers had nowhere else to turn. Another, who volunteered only sporadically, was wracked with guilt after treating a patient with breast cancer; because he didn\u2019t follow up on her case: the cancer worsened until it became terminal.<\/p>\n

Willen observed that no matter their political and personal differences, the similarity among health advocates at the clinic was their refusal to assert that undocumented migrants are not deserving of concern and attention.<\/p>\n

But what about the United States, where one of the most debated topics among politicians is what should be done about immigration? What would it take for this country to consider offering health care to people who migrate without papers?<\/p>\n

Willen contends that it\u2019s easy to describe those who migrate without papers as undeserving of health care because their role in society goes largely unnoticed. She says that by ascribing \u201cillegality\u201d to these undocumented agricultural workers, meat packers, or tobacco growers, we ignore the fact that our economic system depends on their labor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe expect to pay $2.99 for a box of strawberries instead of $4.99 or $8.99, and it\u2019s only by paying migrant workers below minimum wage and denying them health benefits,\u201d she says. \u201cFew Americans are willing to admit this.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, Willen concludes, it\u2019s hard to convince Americans that they\u2019re part of the same economy and community as undocumented workers \u2013 and even harder to make the case that they deserve health benefits.<\/p>\n

As an anthropologist, Willen sees a need to talk about this interconnectedness, so that more people can see the moral obligations society has in providing health care and, more broadly, to simply look out for one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we do well as anthropologists is to tell stories,\u201d she says. \u201cThere should be more research on this type of connectedness. That will obligate us as citizens to see that we\u2019re part of a bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly<\/em> published a research article<\/a> and a commentary<\/a> by Willen in its most recent issue. Co-authors on the commentary article are Jessica Mulligan of Providence College and Heide Casta\u00f1eda of the University of South Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do undocumented migrant workers have a human right to health care? Anthropologist Sarah Willen studies the issue in Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":52473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,2076,179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-53138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global-affairs","category-research","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 06:31:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53319,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53138\/revisions\/53319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/52473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53138"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=53138"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=53138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}