New book chapter: 'Harnessing "diasporic" medical mobilities'

A new book, Migration, Health and Inequality, edited by Felicity Thomas and Jasmine Gideon, is being released by Zed Books in January 2013. 

I've contributed a chapter to the book called 'Harnessing "diasporic" medical mobilities'. Arguing that migrant diasporas are increasingly pegged as the ‘natural’ markets for and ‘ambassadors’ to the world-class private health care increasingly available in their countries of origin, the chapter explores the pursuit and provision of health care by migrant populations ‘back home’, and examines the potential of healthcare to deepen their diasporic linkages with the countries of origin.

Here's the book's promotional blurb:
'Should migrants have the same rights as citizens to health care services? What do we mean by rights and by health? And how do we uphold such rights when diasporic networks provide a diversity of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to maintain or restore their health?

Answering these pressing questions, this book highlights recent developments in the areas of migration, human rights and health from a range of countries. Looking at diverse health issues, from HIV to reproductive and maternal health, and a variety of forms of migration, including asylum seeking, labour migration and trafficking, this timely volume exposes the factors that contribute to the vulnerability of different mobile groups as they seek to uphold their wellbeing.

Migration, Health and Inequality argues that we need to look beyond host country responses and biomedical frameworks and include both the role of transnational health networks and indigenous, popular or lay ideas about health when trying to understand why many migrants suffer from low levels of health relative to their host population. Offering a broad range of linkages between migrant agency, transnationalism and diaspora mechanisms, this unique collection also looks at the impact of migrant health on the health and rights of those communities that are left behind.'

New book: Medical Tourism: The Ethics, Regulation and Marketing of Health Mobility

Medical Tourism: The Ethics, Regulation and Marketing of Health Mobility (C.M. Hall, ed.) has been recently released through Routledge. I had the opportunity to contribute a chapter to the book: 'Claiming "Cultural Competence": The Promotion of Multi-ethnic Malaysia as a Medical Tourism Destination'. 

Book abstract

Medical and health tourism is a significant area of growth in the export of medical, health and tourism services. Although spas and improved well-being have long been part of the tourist experience, health tourism now includes travel for medical purposes ranging from cosmetic and dental surgery through to transplants and infertility treatment. Many countries including China, Cuba, Hungary, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore actively promote and compete for the medical tourist dollar, while many developed countries also provide niche private services. However, the field of medical tourism is increasingly being subject to scrutiny and debate, particularly as a result of concerns over regulatory, ethical and wider health issues.

Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives, this book is one of the first to critically address the substantial political, philosophical and ethical issues that arise out of the transnational practices of medical tourism. Through a series of chapters the book engages with key issues such as the role of regulatory and policy structures in influencing medical and health tourism related mobilities. These issues are investigated by considering range of developing and developed countries, medical systems and health economic perspectives.

The book adopts a multi-layered perspective to not only investigate the business and marketing practices of medical and health tourism but places these within a broader framework of contemporary globalisation, policy and practice. By doing so it opens up debate of the ethical space in which medical and health tourism operates as well as reinforce the wide ranging perspectives that exist on the subject in both the public and academic imagination.

This significant contribution will be of interest to students, academics in tourism and medical policy, trade and economic development fields.

International medical travel and the politics of therapeutic place-making in Malaysia

I received the 2011 AAG Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group's Jacques May PhD Dissertation Award for my thesis (now available online):

Ormond, M. (2011) 'International medical travel and the politics of therapeutic place-making in Malaysia', PhD thesis, School of Geography and Geosciences, University of St Andrews, UK. Available from http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1681

Abstract:

This thesis examines the shifting relationship between the state and its subjects with regard to responsibility for and entitlement to care. Using Malaysia as a case study the research engages with international medical travel (IMT) as an outcome of the neoliberal retrenchment of the welfare state. I offer a critical reading of postcolonial development strategies that negotiate the benefits and challenges of extending care to non-national subjects. The research draws from relevant media, private-sector and governmental documents and 49 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with IMT proponents and critics representing federal, state and urban governmental authorities, professional associations, civil society, private medical facilities and medical travel agencies in Malaysia’s principal IMT regions (Klang Valley, Penang and Malacca). Across four empirical chapters, the thesis demonstrates how ‘Malaysia’ gets positioned as a destination within a range of imagined geographies of care through a strategic-relational logic of care and hospitality. I argue that this positioning places ‘Malaysian’ subjects and spaces into lucrative global networks in ways that underscore particular narratives of postcolonial hybridity that draw from Malaysia’s ‘developing country’, ‘progressive, moderate Islamic’ and ‘multiethnic’ credentials. In considering the political logics of care-giving, I explore how the extension of care can serve as a place-making technology to re-imagine the state as a provider and protector within a globalising marketplace in which care, increasingly commoditised, is tied to the production of new political, social, cultural and economic geographies.

A set of publications related to this work are available:

Ormond, M. (2013) Neoliberal Governance and International Medical Travel in Malaysia, London: Routledge. Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415502382/ 

Ormond, M. (2013) ‘Harnessing “diasporic” medical mobilities’, in F. Thomas and J. Gideon (eds) Migration, Health and Inequality, London: Zed Books, 150-162.

Ormond, M. (2012) ‘Claiming “cultural competence”: The promotion of multi-ethnic Malaysia as a medical tourism destination’, in C.M. Hall (ed.) Medical Tourism: The Ethics, Regulation, and Marketing of Health Mobility, London: Routledge, 187-200. Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415665759/

Ormond, M. (2011) ‘Medical tourism, medical exile: Responding to the cross-border pursuit of healthcare in Malaysia’, in C. Minca and T. Oakes (eds) Real Tourism: Practice, Care and Politics in Contemporary Travel, London: Routledge, 143-161. Available at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415582247/

Ormond, M. (2011) 'Shifting subjects of healthcare: Placing 'medical tourism' in the context of Malaysian healthcare reform', Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52(3), 247-259.