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Abstract:
For Roma groups living in Italy, nomadism is a trait that is simultaneously externally
attributed to them as a “cultural typical characteristic” and shaped by the state,
while also determining groups’ transnational dynamics as an internal response to the
power technologies that Roma encounter in the field of healthcare. In this context,
medical transnationalism plays a role in the personal networks of Roma citizens who
prefer to travel to the countries of their families’ origin for healing purposes rather
than rely on the Italian public health system due to their problematic relationships
with it. This configuration leads subjects to a forced integration of multiple complementary
and incomplete medical approaches (the Italian health system, that of
their origin country, their cultural approach to the body, etc.), resulting in a medical
fragmentation directly shaped by the Roma’s precarious forms of citizenship and the
public policies developed to address their issues. The aim of this text is to analyse,
through an ethnographic case, how health policies participate in the construction of
a state of permanent exception nourished by the forced mobility of people engaged
in a settling process.
