The Local, Everyday Politics and Negotiation of Irregular Migrants' Entitlements and Effective Access to Public Healthcare. Insights from on-Going Research in London and Barcelona

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of local processes of policy implementation in areas that are characterised by a high level of politicisation and where (policy) decisions are driven by conflicting normative and functional imperatives. Based on qualitative research data gathered in London and Barcelona it compares the formal entitlements and effective access of irregular migrants to publicly funded healthcare services in both local settings, through the perspective of those institutions and individuals that have to implement this complex, frequently changing and often inconsistent set of regulations. I therefor develop a framework that combines institutional approaches to (immigration) policy making and implementation with theoretical insights from organisation studies. This helps me to argue that where governments feel unable to openly justify a necessary level of inclusion, they have to resort to a contradictory rhetoric and ambiguous legal frameworks in order to manage – both politically and in practice – the inherent conflict between humanitarian norms, public health concerns and the logic of immigration control.