Migrant narratives, chronicity and HIV in London
View/ Open
Fung2014.doc (696Kb)
Date
26/11/2014Author
Fung, Daisy
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis explores chronicity amongst a small group of migrants living
with HIV and other illnesses in London. It elucidates their engagements
and experiences with self-care, particularly in light of tenuous citizenship.
Drawing on field work in London from 2010-2011 with support groups for
persons with HIV, largely made up of refugees and asylum seekers, I look at
how social vulnerability and frustrations of claims to citizenship are crucial
factors in creating conditions for doubt – reservations that centre less on
living normally with chronic illness, than living and pursuing a life. I
suggest chronicity encompasses varying and contested temporalities that
place pressure on what the body is expected to achieve and endure. The
thesis argues the task is not only to identify sources of injury and suffering,
but to consider different manifestations of how people carry on living, and
the ordinary ethical orientations emerging therein. It makes a number of
interdisciplinary contributions to studies of chronic illness, chronicity, HIV,
ordinary ethics, and migration. It brings together subjects of migration and
HIV in novel ways. In drawing attention to the accidental converging of
HIV, pharmaceuticals and migration, it highlights the unpredictable forms
in which citizenship claims take shape, and go adrift. The thesis thus
highlights how the basis for social entry, as well as exclusion, is deeply
troubled. Being sick with HIV initiates one into systems of care offered by
hospitals and charities, and further services for some, without resolving the
legal and political-economic barriers to employment and self-sufficiency.
For scholars and practitioners working within areas of community and
public health, this study adds to research on both the continued importance
and limitations of support groups for HIV and chronic illness management.
This thesis illustrates how multifaceted support groups are, in the activities
and conversation that unfold, and how this diversity is also a matter of
recognising the diversity of individuals and collectives within them. It
contributes to ethnographies of HIV in terms of chronic illness and
chronicity by focusing less on the integration and presence of HIV into
everyday routine, than its lapsing into a wider ethos of wellness and
optimism, common hardships and distractions. In considering not only how
individuals suffer but also how they endure, this work contributes to the
emerging body of scholarship on ordinary ethics, and the extent to which
the pursuit of good is stitched into both everyday and extraordinary events
and negotiations.