Susann Huschke (University of Limerick)

Susann Huschke was a research fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and co-coordinator of the European Medical Anthropology Young Scholars Network (EASA-MAYS). Between 2008 and 2011, she conducted field research on undocumented migration and health in Germany. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the subjective illness experiences of undocumented Latin American labour migrants in Berlin, while at the same time critically analyzing local and national structures of unequal access to health care. Her research seeks to understand how conceptualizations of entitlement and deservingness play out in concrete interactions between undocumented migrants and healthcare providers. She is also a member of the Berlin Office for Medical Care for Refugees (Büro für medizinische Flüchtlingshilfe), a non-governmental lobby organization that provides healthcare for undocumented migrants. As a medical anthropologist, she aims to understand diverse forms of suffering as a fundamentally social experience, going beyond events of physical illness and connecting subjective experiences of suffering from shifting forms of legal status, migration histories, living conditions, and social relationships.