Homelessness and Forced Migrants in the Global Economy

Introduction

Infectious diseases claim the lives of communities who cannot afford medical treatment. In other words, even if forced migrants are persecuted for their ethnic, religious, racial, nationality or political and social affiliations, the homeless are also excluded from the political debate on how pervasive health partisanship can be remediated. The report aims to explore closely the skewed perceptions justifying the neglect of the homeless and forced migrants who share similar paths of internal displacement due to restrictions imposed on them to access care. In fact, healthcare is commodified and unable to meet the medical needs of vulnerable communities who cannot afford treatment. This is not due to a lack of knowledge but rather of systemic oppression profiting pharmaceutical companies. I will also address some policy recommendations on finding an exit plan under ideal conditions to address these discrepancies in these social groups. 

Homelessness & Forced Migration: Misaligned Perceptions on Societal Contribution

The factual accuracy of chronic homelessness impacting single men more than women or families combined in some countries is an interesting segment to delve into social disparities impacting certain social groups considered heads of households. Therefore, by removing the sole support system for women in many cases, a ripple effect ensues on nuclear families. Therefore, homelessness is not necessarily confined to age, class or gender alone because the combination of these three social determinants can leave communities in abject poverty. Most importantly, poverty is directly linked with the systems at play who regulate housing programs like Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher for low income communities. These social programs undermine these communities without the empowerment to fully participate in society. Instead, these individuals are blamed for no fault of their own due to the overarching political systems bond to keep them subdued. This statement is further generalizable to forced migrants who are susceptible to infectious diseases and discrimatnion in the access of medical care. 

Substantially, the market justice principle can support or justify societal behaviors towards these specific groups of individuals. In fact, they would be seen as needing to get out of poverty by their bootstraps. Globally, some people living in high income countries have a serious mental illness two to four times those in the general population in high income countries like the United States, England, and France (Moore et al. 2019). The causal relationship between social injustice and infectious disease or non-communicable diseases such as mental health is mostly materialized amongst the homeless and migrant populations who can only resort to substandard therapeutic treatment. This was further emphasized in the passage (Moore et al. 2019) where it was stated that approximately one-fourth of homeless people are hospitalized annually. In fact, infectious diseases are more prevalent in these communities due to not having access to integrated quality care.

Besides the increased hospitalization of homeless people, the social injustice faced by forced migrants and the homeless in medical care is due to the influence of corporate interest of pharmaceutical companies on the political process. In other words, these corporations are exploiting the system for their leverage and disregarding the populist proposals to effect change. This was an incident in South Africa who sought to manufacture a local generic brand of the HAART therapy for HIV/AIDS patients. Initially, they were sanctioned by the United States, then the lawsuit was dropped leading to governments being protected to manufacture patented drugs (Mukherjee et al. 2019). Hence, the government's lack of resistance to these corporations' patronage is a major component of social injustice in medical care across the world and in the United States. In the global context, the paradox of individual autonomy and entrepreneurship is more plausible because of universal health coverage but not in the United States (Fein et al. 2019). John Rawl's theory of healthcare as a primary social good can be best exemplified in high income countries except the United States with it's limiting classification determinants of who accesses care (i.e. age, gender, race, class, income, education and zoning policies, etc.).

Even though the unique challenges of forced migrants and the homeless populations can never fully lead to a paralleled comparison, their plight shares comparable attributes. For instance, both social groups have historically been neglected in global communities in spite of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care and the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). In general, they are denied access to food and basic services. In addition, the health care community is not completely ridden of it's biases and incompetency due to lack of training to care for these populations. One can also conjure that both groups experience internal displacement due to inaccessibility to healthcare inequities. On the other hand, the text does not outline the internal and external criteria that led to a reduced level of affordable housing, the impact of redlining practices on people of color. Redlining was a social construct of the federal government to limit access to homeownership to black people. Other groups at risk of homelessness include veterans, runaway and homeless youth, women and children. 

International Community Non-response in Policy Recommendations

Despite the roadblocks faced by uninsured and underinsured individuals in accessing health care, forced migrants and the homeless also need the support of local governments and the international community to destabilize inequities of access, activity limitations and participatory exclusions. This is considered true when Toole (2019) expounds that the United States spends about 0.2% of it's gross domestic product on official development assistance given that its expenditure on health outweighs the per capita healthcare spending from low, middle and high income countries. Another possible solution is reducing administrative costs imposed by corporations through the inference of studies on the best interventions that yielded positive results to augment utilization of care services amongst these populations. The other fact readers have to grapple with is that anti-nuisance laws somehow thrust a cloak of invisibility over the state of homelessness or could it be that these laws are meant to protect the homeless and forced migrant populations from self-harm. 

Given that organizations such as the Heading Home initiative based in Albuquerque, New Mexico or the Healthcare for the Homeless Program (HCHP) provide housing to the homeless, reduce crime rates and the latter provide comprehensive curative care. Supplemental work is mandatory to protect the homeless and forced migrants who are still treated as second class citizens. Also, given the political agenda of administrations, these social programs may be subject to underfunding further limiting the options of these communities. 

Conclusion

To conclude the report, policies are not meant to be the standalone intervention to solve the injustice towards the homeless and forced migrants. Through the recognition of international financial institutions’ manipulation of the use of social determinants of health to pursue their self-interests by punishing the public sector, for providing adequate care to vulnerable populations, is one of the many sources of social injustice that can be handled if resistance is penned unto these corporations profiting at the expense of the detriment of vulnerable communities in the long term future.  

References

1. Community Tool Box. (2015). World Health Organization video: Social Determinants of Health [Video]. Youtube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES1IX3Mam20&feature=youtu.be.
2. Fein, O., & Geiger, H.J. (2019).Medical Care. In Levy, B. S., & McStowe, H. L. (Eds.), Social injustice and public health (p. 231-249). Oxford University Press.
3. Moore, E.M., Cheng, T.H., Maghsoodi, R.I. & Gelberg, L. (2019). People Who Are Homeless. In Levy, B. S., & McStowe, H. L. (Eds.), Social injustice and public health (p. 195-212). Oxford University Press.
4. Mukherjee, J.S., & Farmer, P.E. (2019). Infectious Diseases. In Levy, B. S., & McStowe, H. L. (Eds.), Social injustice and public health (p. 251-271). Oxford University Press.
5. Toole, M.J.. (2019).Forced Migrants: Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons. In Levy, B. S., & McStowe, H. L. (Eds.), Social injustice and public health (p. 213-228). Oxford University Press.