Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EUBorderCare (Intimate Encounters in EU Borderlands: Migrant Maternity, Sovereignty and the Politics of Care on Europe’s Peripheries)

Teaser

EU Border Care is a comparative study of the politics of maternity care among undocumented migrants on the EU’s peripheries.Empirical analysis of personal and institutional relations of care and control in the context of pregnancy and childbirth will supportan innovative...

Summary

EU Border Care is a comparative study of the politics of maternity care among undocumented migrants on the EU’s peripheries.
Empirical analysis of personal and institutional relations of care and control in the context of pregnancy and childbirth will support
an innovative critique of the moral rationale underpinning healthcare delivery and migration governance in some of Europe’s most
densely crossed borderlands in France, Greece, Italy and Spain.
Unlike other categories of migrants, undocumented pregnant women are a growing phenomenon, yet few social science or public
health studies address EU migrant maternity care. This subject has urgent implications: whilst recent geopolitical events in North
Africa and the Middle East have triggered a quantifiable increase in pregnant women entering the EU in an irregular situation, poor
maternal health indicators among such women represent ethical and medical challenges to which frontline maternity services
located in EU borderlands have to respond, often with little preparation or support from national and European central authorities.

Grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in maternity wards located in French Guiana and Mayotte (Overseas France), the
North Aegean and Attica (Greece), Sicily (Italy), and Ceuta and Melilla (Spain), the project will trace the networks of maternity care
delivery in peripheries facing an increase of immigration flows, and characterised by structural social and economic
underinvestment. The team will investigate migrant maternity from three interlinked research perspectives: migrant women,
healthcare delivery staff, and regional institutional agencies. Empirical and desk research, combined with creative audio-visual
methods, will document migrant maternity on EU borderlands to address wider questions about identity and belonging, citizenship
and sovereignty, and humanitarianism and universalism in Europe today.

EU Border Care’s innovations are organised around 4 major research axes:
1) The use of maternity care as a site for non-clinical social science investigation in migration;
2) Multi-sited symmetric ethnography as a conceptual device to collect and analyse qualitative data;
3) EU borderlands as social and political peripheries, especially in the context of the social life of healthcare
delivery;
4) The study of the politics of care and control in the context of migrant maternity as an unprecedented departure
in the anthropology of morals and humanitarian government.

Work performed

The first 18 months of the project have been extremely productive and have broadly adhered to the timetable laid out in the application. The paragraphs below will provide further details on the activities to date, contextualizing slight changes to proposal plans.

1. Timeline: EU Border Care was granted ethical approval by the ERC on the 10th July 2015, thus paving the way for the grant agreement to be approved and signed by all parties. Project start date at the HI was thus officially confirmed as 1st August 2015, as soon as possible thereafter in order to follow as closely as possible the original timeframe of the application. The first months were dedicated to the PI’s establishment at the HI, including relocation of the PI’s family, settling into her office and her HI, etc. Additionally, in line with the applications’ timetable, focus of PI’s activities were: the establishment of the project within the institutional networks, and beyond; the recruitment of the Advisory Board and the Ethical Advisory Board (separate entities); the development of the project website, initial dissemination activities (publications and international conference) and the recruitment procedure for full-time researchers and external collaborators.

2. Recruitment. Recruitment was made in months 9 and 10 of project respectively, in spring 2016. From first days of recruitment onwards, team members were trained in qualitative research methods, including ethics. Team members immediately started process of identification of respective field sites, and information and authorisation request procedures. Once the team members were recruited, the activities adhered to the timeline set out in the application process (please see details below).

3. Recruitment of the Advisory Board (AB) and Ethical Advisory Board (EAB): The Advisory Board Members correspond overall with those listed in the application, with a few changes in order to reflect the changing nature of the research context and new potential scientific collaborations within the EU, and with two international scientific networks in North America and Australia-Pacific). Additionally, following the excellent recommendations of the ERC Ethical Review Panel and the PI’s Ethical Advisor at the ERC, a separate Ethical Advisory Board was established in order to focus in particular on ethical training and auditing throughout the project.
AB and EAB Meetings for EU Border Care: The Advisory Board and Ethical Advisory Board, in line with the timeline of the application, had the opportunity to meet and be directly consulted during the first major project conference organized at the HI over 3 full days at the end of June 2017 (27th-29th June). The first two days were dedicated to scientific research findings and exchange, and the last to the internal ethics workshop in preparation for long-term fieldwork and data collection (programme available online).
All team members contributed to the organisation and participated in the conference, as well as the internal ethics workshop, including D and the project photographer.
Additionally, on the 30th January 2017, a mid-fieldwork internal project was held at the EUI with all team members, and including the presence of the principal ethical advisor (Prof. Kelley) and ERCcOMICS graphic artist collaborating with EU Border Care, Ms. Sandrine Martin (more below). Shortly after this internal meeting, Prof. Kelley submitted, as scheduled, her ethical assessment of the project to the ERC. Eu Border Care is pleased to have received a very positive endorsement from Prof. Kelley.

4. Additional Project Meetings: Internal EU Border Care workshop organised in Athens, 26-28th October, between PI and team members, to spend two days exchanging information and personal experiences. PI was thus able to assess personally health and wellbeing of team members, and provide professional and personal support, advice and encouragement.

5. Fieldwork Timeline and Protocols: In line

Final results

Despite national and regional specificities, European, governmental and non-governmental law enforcement
and relief agencies operating in EU borderlands today have to approach and respond to a
newcomer whose temporary health condition challenges normative ethical guidelines in migration
governance. Pregnant migrant women represent some of the world’s most vulnerable populations entering
the European Union today. Their maternal health indicators are consistently poor: existing surveys show that
they receive little to no routine antenatal care, and experience more complications during labour and childbirth
than their non-migrant counterparts (Almeida et al. 2013; FRA 2011; Médecins du Monde 2013; Weisberg
2013; Woodward, Howard & Wolffers 2013). A lack of information about available services combined
with a fear of prosecution - despite regulatory allowances excusing national medical and social care services
from reporting undocumented healthcare seekers - suggest why these women slip between the cracks of universal
routine antenatal care. Because of their specific medical histories, pregnant migrants also come to represent
medical challenges to healthcare delivery. Women migrants who enter EU borderlands today as part
of smuggling operations developed with little regard to human security are exposed to increasing health
complications.
Migrant maternity thus represents a significant challenge to frontline services located in EU borderlands. As
migrants who find themselves in a situation of irregularity, undocumented pregnant women are also classified
as vulnerable and eligible to various degrees of ‘free emergency care’ in the four European Member
States in question. Pregnant migrants thus embody this striking ambivalence of being both subject to
legal prosecution and beneficiaries of humanitarian protection under exceptional legal clauses. EU
Border Care’s high-risk, high-gain objective is to explore anthropologically this unique and understudied
tension between care and control in the day-to-day governance of maternal migration in maternity care
services located in EU borderlands, with a particular ethnographically-grounded focus on how the main actors
involved, such as migrant patients, doctors, midwives and social care workers, experience close contact
with one another in the intimacy of the labour ward and the delivery room in the moments preparing for the
birth of a baby.

Website & more info

More info: http://eubordercare.eu/.