Centering coloniality in Filipino immigrant experiences of medical practice in Spain: failed care, chauvinism, and non-knowledge.

• In Event: 50462 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Colonial Legacies

Abstract

Based on interviews with 49 Filipino immigrants in Spain, this paper explores how historicising contemporary healthcare experiences in Spain demonstrates an enduring colonial violences in the medical encounter. Working from Fanon’s (1978) insistence that these historic and returning violences inculcate a “lingering doubt” as to the medical practitioner’s “essential humanity”, this paper attends to the practices which reinforce this doubt. By attending to how knowledges become revealed through practice (Mol, 2002) and interpreting the colonial dynamics which structure the production and application of these knowledges, we gain insights into fundamental healthcare inequalities. Spain offers a generative sight for considering these dynamics, both because of its worldwide legacy of colonialism and as a gateway state for postcolonial immigration into Europe. Attending to Filipino immigrants’ experiences as both migrants and patients draws attention to how the same violences which shape international movement come to shape the medical encounter. Through this discussion, this paper aims at addressing how we can produce and practice doctoring differently to learn from the failures in care generated by colonial dynamics and professional(ised) ignorance of its impact on medical practice. The paper concludes with recommendations for improvements in providing for patients’ access to both complaint and advocacy, and an outline for developing medical curricula to address the institutional reproduction of documented failings.

Author

• Simon Fern, Rice University