Dr. Susann Huschke

Visiting Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen's University Belfast, UK; associate member of the research area Medical Anthropology
PhD dissertation (completed): "Kranksein in der Illegalität. Eine medizinethnologische Studie über lateinamerikanische MigrantInnen in Berlin"
Room 19.03.002
BT7 1NN Belfast
Susann Huschke received her Ph.D. at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin in 2012. Between 2008 and 2011, she conducted field research on undocumented migration and health in Germany. Her book Kranksein in der Illegalität (2013) focuses on the subjective illness experiences of undocumented Latin American labor migrants in Berlin, while at the same time critically analyzing local and national structures of unequal access to health care. Since 2008, she has also been 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 with shifting forms of legal status, migration histories, living and working conditions, and social relationships.
Her current research project explores how mobile female sex workers in Northern Ireland ensure their health, handle illness episodes and deal with emotional, social and mental suffering. It addresses their subjective experiences with criminalization, stigmatization and barriers to accessing health services, for example due to lack of legal immigration status.