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Bricolage as conceptual tool for understanding access to healthcare in superdiverse populations

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Abstract

This paper applies, for the first time, the concept of bricolage to understand the experiences of superdiverse urban populations and their practices of improvisation in accessing health services across healthcare ecosystems. By adopting the concept of healthcare bricolage and an ecosystem approach, we render visible the agency of individuals as they creatively mobilise, utilise, and re-use resources in the face of constraints on access to healthcare services. Such resources include multiple knowledges, ideas, materials, and networks. The concept of bricolage is particularly useful given that superdiverse populations are by definition heterogeneous, multilingual and transnational, and frequently in localities characterised as ‘resource-poor’, in which bricolage may be necessary to overcome such constraints, and where mainstream healthcare providers have limited understanding of the challenges that populations experience in accessing services. The ‘politics of bricolage’ as neoliberal strategies of self-empowerment legitimising the withdrawal of the welfare state are critically discussed. Conflicting aspects of bricolage are made explicit in setting out tactics of relevance to researching the practices of bricolage.

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Notes

  1. Authorisation code for Project Lead ERN_14-1111B.

  2. This paper is not intended to report on the frequency of bricolage (to be reported elsewhere) but we note that over 50% of interview respondents reported some form of bricolage.

  3. A network for exchanging services without direct cash payment.

  4. ‘vård som inte kan anstå’ or’care that cannot wait’ must be given to asylum seekers

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Funding

NORFACE GRANT 462-14-090, “Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Research into Superdiversity, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Jenny Phillimore

  2. Sociology Department, Uppsala University, Box 624, 751 26, Uppsala, Sweden

    Hannah Bradby

  3. Institute for Ethnology and Cultural Studies, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Michi Knecht

  4. Instituto Universitario de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal

    Beatriz Padilla

  5. Keele University, Keele, UK

    Simon Pemberton

Authors
  1. Jenny Phillimore
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  2. Hannah Bradby
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  3. Michi Knecht
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  4. Beatriz Padilla
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  5. Simon Pemberton
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jenny Phillimore.

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Table 2 Table of respondents
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Phillimore, J., Bradby, H., Knecht, M. et al. Bricolage as conceptual tool for understanding access to healthcare in superdiverse populations. Soc Theory Health 17, 231–252 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-018-0075-4

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