Professional identity construction in the healthcare sector

Abstract

Professionals who engage with migrants in the healthcare sector may take on the role of mediator of information or advisor. Research has shown how these roles might either facilitate or obstruct migrants’ access to healthcare, but little is known about how professionals navigate the potentially conflicting interests of migrants and representatives of the healthcare system, despite their central role in realizing migrants’ rights to healthcare. This article explores the perspectives of professionals in the Swedish healthcare sector who engage in mediating healthcare information to migrants across linguistic and cultural boundaries and advising them on how to access services. Narrative interviews with five stakeholder groups were conducted. The narrative analysis of two focal excerpts from different professional groups demonstrates how these professionals construct mediating as multidirectional, providing information to the migrants and also keeping the state authority informed. The findings reveal the importance of the knowledge positions that different professionals construct in their narratives and to what extent these support their perceived potential to change the healthcare system. In contrast to findings from other studies, the participants are adamant as regards the importance of treating migrants within the framework of the legal provisions, rather than by finding ways around legal constraints. Nevertheless, the use of rhetorical means to create an effective story can bear the danger of perpetuating one-sided accounts of the migrants and other stakeholders.