Care on the Verge: Global Health Interventions for Malaria and Biological Citizenship among Undocumented Karen Migrants in the Thai-Burma Borderland.

Nago, Asami

Care on the Verge: Global Health Interventions for Malaria and Biological Citizenship among Undocumented Karen Migrants in the Thai-Burma Borderland.

Files

2018-08-phd-nago.pdf (1.59 MB)

Date

2018-08

Authors

Nago, Asami

Department

Anthropology

Abstract

This dissertation investigates global health interventions for malaria in the borderland, and the ways in which it impacts social relations, identity, and border experiences among the people at international malaria research clinics. The Thai-Burma borderland has become a site of increased malaria control interventions due to the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) malaria parasites and the existence of highly mobile populations without citizenship. As such, they have shaped the landscape of the borderland as an ambiguous and liminal space for local Karen migrants and international medical doctors. I explore the ways in which people perceive of malaria as a biosocial disease in a clinical setting and create a new identity through experiencing the political economy of the borderland. Undocumented Karen migrants from Burma cross the international border to seek health care access at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU), an international malaria research unit in Thailand. They experience malaria as a consequence of political economy of ethnic conflict, poverty, structural violence, and discrimination against them as non-citizens and as undocumented migrants in the borderland. The vulnerability of this population is shaped by their lack of political citizenship by governments. However, medical researchers have neglected the sociocultural, political, and economic aspects of malaria, nor have they considered the social experiences of undocumented Karen migrants. The SMRU clinics provide care opportunities for undocumented Karen migrants, but also assures cosmopolitan medico-humanitarianism opportunities for international doctors as well as local Karen health practitioners. More importantly, access to healthcare at these facilities provides biological citizenship to undocumented Karen migrants. The SMRU clinics generate statistical evidence and scientific knowledge of malaria suffering. Despite this, the knowledge produced does not represent patients’ individual experiences of suffering with malaria and social inequalities. Thus, I argue that the inequalities and violence that people experience in their everyday life in the borderland are tactically ignored by the global health paradigm of malaria.

Keywords

Biomedicine, global health, The Karen, migration, humanitarianism

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10125/62093

Rights

All UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.

Collections

Ph.D. - Anthropology

Full item page

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.