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The access to healthcare for asylum seekers in Italy: disparities between legislation and practice
Rossetti, Elisa ; Štěrbová, Ludmila (advisor) ; Zeitel Bank, Natascha (referee)
Asylum seekers are a socially excluded migrant population, presenting specific healthcare needs, which are often not acknowledged, nor properly addressed by national and European laws. Hailing from areas with poor sanitary attention, exposed to violence during the journey, they arrive to Italy with a high health vulnerability. The aim of this thesis is to find the discrepancies between the legislation providing healthcare access to the asylum seekers, in compliance with the fundamental human rights, and the practical healthcare responses in the Italian context of the North African Emergency (2011-2013), relying on a systematic literature review. The emergency-driven responses to the asylum inflow resulted in a heterogeneous reception and healthcare assistance, as the Italian asylum legislation focuses more on asylum procedures than healthcare, which remains regionally fragmented too. Asylum seekers faced discrimination and barriers in accessing healthcare, mainly due to information, linguistic and bureaucratic difficulties. Therefore, NGOs and associations intervened locally to fill the gap left by the institutional response, with a better focus on the social determinants of health and the importance of social integration as well. After 2013, better reception conditions were formulated and the legislation revised. However, the difference between legislation and practice on the asylum seekers healthcare access constitutes a human rights violation still present nowadays. Clearer approaches should be developed to address the issue uniformly.
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