Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

For several decades, there has been a trend among international relations scholars toward the ‘securitization’ of migration into Western countries: an association of national security and sovereignty with control over borders and the incorporation of resident migrants. This newer conception of integration in terms of social control and cohesion coexists with an older one that puts the accent on migrants’ participation in receiving-country life. A largely unspoken, unproven assumption has developed that the two conceptions are associated, with equal migrant participation seen as leading to an integrated, cohesive society. Studying migrants living with HIV/AIDS (MLWHA) presents an opportunity to test that connection. Two of the most salient phenomena of the contemporary period, migration and AIDS have both been undergoing securitization and have become perceived in certain quarters as linked threats. Policymakers’ responses to MLWHA illuminate the opportunities, restrictions, and inequalities they face in the areas of entry, surveillance, and access to preventive treatment and care. By means of a small-N comparative policy study, those responses are analyzed in general and across three pairs of critical cases—Austria and Germany, Belgium and France, and the U.S. and Canada—in an effort to explain the observed patterns. The results, which do not correspond to the neat typologies of national integration models found in the literature, help shed light on the relationship between integration as participation and integration as social cohesion and on ways to confront and defuse the securitization of migration and health with inclusive policies and consideration of the structural barriers to care.