Tactics of diabetes control: Turkish immigrant experiences with chronic illness in Berlin, Germany.
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Date
2009Author
Guell, Cornelia
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis explores Turkish migrants’ practices of diabetes care in Germany. Health
statistics frequently identify minority groups as vulnerable to chronic illness and
Turkish-origin Germans are said to be more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes than
Germans or Turks in Turkey. Anthropological studies on marginal population groups
with diabetes explore experiences of social suffering and inequality that influence
such high illness prevalence, or investigate how conflictual lay beliefs and medical
encounters affect illness care. Those studies that analyse active diabetes patient and
healthcare practices concentrate on the majority population. Drawing on
ethnographic fieldwork in Berlin from September 2006 to September 2007, this
thesis examines how Turkish Berliners actively engage in diabetes care, and thus
joins two themes seldom connected: illness practices and marginality. Initial
interviews with healthcare professionals alluded to a Turkish migrant patient group
living in deprivation and immobilised by high illiteracy rates, lacking language skills
and health knowledge. Despite such experience of marginality, ethnographic
exploration revealed that informal diabetes care, for example through a Turkishlanguage
self-help group, is nonetheless individually and collectively negotiated
where formal care is inadequate. On the one hand, the thesis investigates practices of
diabetes control in learning, monitoring and manoeuvring diabetes. Rather than
representing the common image of the inert, disadvantaged migrant patient, Turkish
Berliners of the self-help group engage in deliberate “tactics of diabetes control” to
make their chronic illness experience habitable. On the other hand, the thesis
explores how “diabetes among Turkish-origin Berliners” can be a form of sociality,
political activism and economic enterprise that involves many social actors not only
patients and their healthcare professionals, in order to fill a provision gap.