Didier Fassin is a French anthropologist and a sociologist in the school of science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He has conducted fieldwork in Senegal, Ecuador, South Africa, and France. Fassan is also trained as a physician in internal medicine and holds a degree in public health. Some of his early research focused on medical anthropology, the AIDS epidemic, mortality disparities, and global health.
• “Sometimes the foreigner, too, is no more than his body, but this body is no longer the same: useless to the political economy, it now finds its place in a new moral economy that values suffering over labor and compassion more than rights.”
• “Deontologically, the medical officers were caught between the duties mandated to them by the public institution that employed them and those their profession required them to respect…”
• “The logic of state sovereignty in the control of immigration clearly prevailed over the universality of the principle of the right to life. The compassion protocol had met its limit.”
Because this document is the first chapter of a book, there was no source list provided, therefor no conclusions could be drawn.
The article supports its arguments in two main ways, by providing statistics and case stories. Statistics pertaining to medical based residence applications are separated by location, rationale, and department they were processed by in order to demonstrate varied acceptance rates. Case stories are used to show the process, the hurdles faced by applicants, and the effect that this policy has on the health of applicants.
The distribution of scarce resources, specifically with healthcare, is a struggle faced by all institutions and how it is acted upon is heavily dependent on the culture and values of the people making the allocations. In France, a relatively wealthy country with a high standard of medical care available, the government has elected to make advanced medical care available to people who would not be able to obtain it in their respective countries of origin by granting them residence rights on a health basis. The article discusses the social factors behind this, the adaptation of the policy over time to meet new demands, and how a balance between ethical and moral obligations, overall public health interests, and equal opportunity of immigrants applying was developed.
This article does not specifically address emergency response. It focuses more on the public health, its responsibility to deal with the health of immigrants, and the social factors behind this.
I researched further on
With resources available I was unable to determine where else this book has been referenced externally, however the themes and topics presented in this work appear in some of Fassin's other works.
The arguement is supported by the use of statistics, case studies, and stories of immigrants going through the system.