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Contribution short abstract:

A commitment to commonning healthcare requires a radical paradigm shift, distinctly around wage labor. Current (state) practices connecting wage labor, healthcare and the border regime create contradictions and push into precarity, (especially) migrantized individuals working in low-wage industries

Contribution long abstract:

In Germany, healthcare access represents a major obstacle for many migrants working in low-wage industries. Coverage is mandatory, potential patients paying through employment, a familial connection to an employed person or through out of pocket contribution. Wage labor is thus an essential element to access medical infrastructure, yet, paradoxically, labor in low-wage industries is the reason why many workers require long-term medical attention. Too often, because job security is essential for financial stability and right of residence, health is not prioritized.

Conflicts for health and social rights demonstrate patterns of treatment denial, medical negligence and structural racism that echo Fraser‘s (2017) observation on current practices which making (social) reproduction unsustainable under financial capitalism. Harsh physical labor creates a need for treatment and care/rest, which is often denied or skipped altogether in detriment of the workplace. Migrantized individuals are then forced into the position to fight for their social rights and access to the "common", "universal" healthcare.

This contribution draws from my ethnographic fieldwork working alongside the grassroot organization Arbeitslosenhilfe Oldenburg(ALSO) and maps struggles for (social) reproduction of intra-EU migrants in low-wage industries of the Oldenburg region. A Social (State) Regime analysis of a region dominated by the meat and delivery industry reveals failures in healthcare infrastructure for people whose health is bound, due to the physical nature of their work, to inevitably crack, and what role it plays for perpetuating multiple precarity. It also reveals paradoxes that intertwine the healthcare industry, racialization and wage labor.