The health of migrating street-workers in Oslo

Abstract

Since the expansion of the EU and the European economic crisis in the late-2000s, there has been a marked increase in the presence of migrating street-workers from Romania in Norway. Non-governmental organisations have raised concerns of a significant prevalence of health problems and unmet health needs, limited rights to healthcare, poorly adapted services and challenges imposed by Oslo’s sleeping ban. Little research exists on the health of this group and how this is impacted upon by their living conditions in Oslo. This paper employs structural violence as the main framework in which to understand their experiences of health. The objectives of this thesis were broadly to explore the: research participants’ experiences, understandings and practices around health including those related to protecting health and preventing ill-health; relationship between their health-related experiences and practices and the control measures of Oslo municipality and its contractors, police and private guards; potentials for individual and community social actions to safeguard their health. Three months of participant observation, informal conversations and unstructured/ semi-structured interviews with migrating street-workers were subsequently undertaken. Study sites included various spaces in Oslo, such as outdoor sleeping areas, the streets of downtown Oslo, and non-governmental services. This thesis finds that poverty, the policing of public and private space, lack of access to shelter and limited health and social rights, collide to shape the ill-health of this group. In response, migrating street-workers in Oslo develop strategies to both prevent and cope with ill-health, maintaining their survival and income-generating activities. Structural violence shapes the ill-health of this group in pernicious ways from which preventative and coping responses ensue. The results establish ill-health as an outcome of the social and structural conditions in which this group are met with in Oslo. Health must be a central focus in the delivery of services to this group with consideration to the structural vulnerability that characterises their daily lives.