Undocumented Migrants and Healthcare: Eight Stories From Switzerland by Jossen Marianne

Author:Jossen, Marianne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: M (Medicine), JKS (Social welfare and social services), JKSN1 (Charities, voluntary services and philanthropy), 1DF (Central Europe), SOC007000 (SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration), SOC057000 (SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disease & Health Issues), SOC066000 (SOCIAL SCIENCE / Refugees), undocumented migrants, healthcare, Switzerland, inclusion, non-governmental organisations, Public Health, Migration Studies
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Published: 2018-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Jonathan: ‘I had no place to go’

The Swiss law on asylum states that ‘asylum seekers must state any serious health problems of relevance’ (AsylG Art. 26 al. 1) during the asylum process. Usually, requests for asylum on purely medical grounds are quickly turned down. However, in some cases asylum seekers are granted a residency of one year with a permit, because in the country they have left behind

a necessary treatment is not granted or not granted sufficiently and the return would result in a rapid and life-threatening deterioration of health. (Der Schweizerische Bundesrat 2016)1

In 2015, 201 people were granted a temporary residency exclusively for health reasons. This amounts to 4% of the one-year permits granted that year (Der Schweizerische Bundesrat 2016).

It is 2016 and Jonathan has been granted a one-year permit for medical reasons only weeks before his interview with me takes place. Had the interview happened later, he would probably have cited this as his most important moment of inclusion in healthcare. But as the event is so recent, and he has already been in Switzerland for eight years, Jonathan concentrates on the time before the permit was granted.

Jonathan’s story starts with the deaths of his two brothers; like him, both suffered from a mixed form of type I and type II diabetes. His sister advised him to leave his home country and the family started selling its cows so that Jonathan could afford a safe trip to Switzerland in 2008. However, on his journey he had no means to care for his diabetes. At the time of his arrival in Switzerland, he was immediately hospitalized:

The doctor checked my sugar and it was, oh, very, very, very serious. So, immediately they took me to the hospital. I stayed there maybe one or two weeks […] because the diabetes was very, oh, no insulin […] you know.

From this time onwards, Jonathan enrolled in the asylum process. His request was rejected by the authorities because — according to the officials — diabetes can be treated in Jonathan’s home country. In 2010 Jonathan decided to go into hiding. Other than Béatrice, Maria and Suzanne, he did not have any contacts in Switzerland. Trying to get work, especially while suffering from untreated diabetes, did not even seem to be worth considering, so Jonathan adopted strategies to take care of his health that harmed him further:

I eat everything, which is not allowed you know. But I don’t have no choice.

With no access to insulin, he took up walking in an attempt, as he says, ‘to get the sugar down’ and states that this caused a lesion on his foot that did not heal. For Jonathan, this wound presented a severe physical problem, and, in light of the circumstances of his brothers’ deaths, was also a source of a very profound fear for his life:

The foot was also a very big problem for me because my brother had it in my country and he couldn’t make it.

After some months, Jonathan’s next attempt to be included

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