Exploring barriers refugees and refugee claimants experience accessing reproductive health care services in Toronto
Exploring barriers refugees and refugee claimants experience accessing reproductive health care services in Toronto
Author
Gateri, Hellen
Richards, Donna
Faculty Advisor
Date
2017
Keywords
women refugees , refugee claimants , reproductive health , race , gender , class and barriers
Abstract (summary)
Studies conducted in Canada and other countries with similar health care systems, such as
Britain, Australia, and the Netherlands, demonstrate that refugees and refugee claimants
experience barriers in accessing reproductive health care services, such as pre- and postnatal
care and cervical cancer screening. These studies further indicate that the barriers that
refugees and refugee claimants experience are largely due to racism and discrimination,
culture, language, and/or communication. However, these studies rarely consider the broader
political, economic, historical, and social contexts from which these women are attempting to
access reproductive health care services. For example, they rarely consider the effects of
neoliberal immigration policies and health care cut backs resulting from Canada’s adoption of
a neoliberal ideology that supports minimal government intervention in the economy. Many
of the studies reviewed emphasise cultural barriers, that is, the researchers assume that a
woman’s culture is the most important determinant of their participation in reproductive
health care services. When culture is viewed as the main problem attention is deflected from
systemic racism and discrimination and other factors that impede access to reproductive
health care services. These studies also fail to capture the unique gendered and racialised
experiences of women refugees and refugee claimants and how these affect their access to
reproductive health care services. To improve accessibility, most of these studies recommend
culturally sensitive service delivery or increased awareness of racialised cultures among health
professionals. Culturally sensitive or cross-cultural care, informed and shaped by neoliberal
and multicultural policies, are popular approaches to addressing the needs of ethnic minority
populations, or “multicultural others,” and managing ethnic or cultural diversity within the
Canadian health care system. Guided by antiracist theories and postcolonial feminist theories,
this paper argues that neoliberal ideology and multicultural discourse have effectively moved
attention away from racism and other systemic barriers in Canadian society and attributed the
problem of unequal access primarily to the cultures of women refugees and refugee claimants.
In the multicultural paradigm, the structural and material differences or inequities among
populations are reduced to the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity. The discourse of diversity
overlooks power differences by explaining inequities in cultural terms that construct culture,
along with ethnicity and community, as static and independent of social, historical, economic,
and structural forces. As such new research is required to explore whether and to what extent women refugees and refugee claimants underutilise reproductive health care services, such as pre- and postnatal care and cervical cancer screening, taking into account not just culture but
also the social, economic, political, and historical context from which the women are seeking
health care services.
Publication Information
Gateri, H., & Richards, D. (2017). Exploring barriers refugees and refugee claimants experience accessing reproductive health care in Toronto. Refugee Review: Special Focus Labour, 3, 122–136. https://espminetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Refugee-Review-Vol.-III.pdf
DOI
Notes
Item Type
Article
Language
English
Rights
All Rights Reserved