Health, international migration and security in the European Union and South America: a critical and comparative perspective

• Grant number: 24/21905-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Denise Martin Coviello
• Grantee: Jameson Vinícius Martins da Silva
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

International migrants and refugees have been depicted as a threat to the Western way of life, and the attack on their rights has become a platform for several political forces and the object of sensationalist media coverage. Although the number of migrants and refugees has remained relatively stable over the years, peaks in migration are often framed as "crises" or, more extremely, as an "invasion" of Global North countries, thereby justifying their political framing as a security issue. Securitarian approaches, beyond international human mobility itself, are linked to a specific perspective on global health governance, which fosters fear of infectious diseases frequently associated with migrants, as widely demonstrated in studies on migration during the Covid-19 pandemic. This research aims to critically analyze the intersections between security, collective health, and migration policies in the European Union and South America, focusing on the outcomes of public policies on migration and health at the regional level, from 2010 to 2025. Based on qualitative research and through the theoretical lens of "security as emancipation," which challenges dominant securitarian approaches, the project focuses on the role of collective health within migration policy and its potential to transform that policy by adopting principles more aligned with human rights. Using a multilevel structural-functional comparative approach, this qualitative study centers on the cases of Brazil, Chile, Germany, and Spain, treated as units of observation within their respective regional regimes. The comparative perspective of this study may contribute to the study of policy diffusion across two major regional regimes of migration and health policy, within a critical approach to global health and migration studies. (AU)