Medicines from home to mitigate alienation abroad: Explaining Indian-Australians transnational health-seeking

• In Event: Caring across Borders: Materiality and Belonging in Transnational Families I

Abstract

The Indian diaspora is the fastest growing immigrant group in Australia and one of the world’s largest Diasporas. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic data from Melbourne, Australia (including 28 interviews and 5 focus groups) to explain how Indian migrants procurement of medicines from India is used to mitigate alienation in Australia. Procuring medicines from India sidesteps limited access to subsidised public healthcare in Australia when visa conditions did not permit full-fledged access, overcomes costs associated with buying medicines in Australia, and ameliorates the risks of not obtaining preferred prescriptions in Australia. Procuring medicines from India was also configured by gender and age; Indian men frequently sought medicines to improve their individual bodies and functional capacity, whereas Indian women typically sought medicines to improve their capacity to care for their children. Indian children, who were not first-generation migrants, were not given medicines from ‘home’ but only Australian medicines to help localise them to Australia. Unlike in previous studies, participants neither described feelings of cultural familiarity with Indian health systems as reasons for procuring medicines from home, nor did they elaborate on the therapeutic value of being taken ‘home’ to recover. Rather, integral to both typologies were fragmented understandings of citizenship and belonging in Australia. This was most clearly evident in participant’s difficulties with navigating an Australian healthcare system that was unfamiliar and incongruous with previous cultural experiences and expectations.

Authors

• Bianca Brijnath, National Ageing Research Institute

• Josefine Antoniades, Research Fellow