The politics of belonging and intercultural health care

Belonging was one of the recurrent themes in an ethnography examining the social context of intergroup health care relations. Certain people, both patients and health care providers, were constructed as belonging in the social fabric of health care, whereas some were left on the margins and constructed as Other. In this article, the theme of belonging is explored through a multilayered analysis of the contexts of intergroup health care encounters. The macropolitics of belonging are situated in the larger societal setting, replete with practices that mark Other. Evidences of such Othering is then traced through organizational contexts, drawing on the exemplars of visiting hour policy, integration of alternative therapies, and provision of language services. Intergroup interactions are then reanalyzed in light of micropolitics at the individual nurse-patient level. The overall picture presented is one of a range of social, political, historical, and economic forces reproduced in everyday intercultural health care encounters.