Paper short abstract:

Looking at the health access situation for EU citizens from Rumania and Bulgaria living under precarious life conditions in Frankfurt am Main, this contribution analyses the interrelations between homeless im/mobilities and internal de/bordering practises on an urban scale.

Paper long abstract:

Capturing views and interpretations of 16 social workers and medical frontline staff interviewed between 2020 and 2023, this contribution takes a closer look at the interrelations between homeless im/mobilities and internal de/bordering on an urban scale in the realm of migration and health care access. A considerable part of the homeless in Frankfurt am Main are EU citizens once immigrated to Germany in search for employment from Bulgaria and Rumania and now live in precarious life situations without any social entitlements or healthcare insurance after years of informal work. Although Frankfurt am Main provides a relatively well-positioned humanitarian healthcare network, accessing these structures is not an automatism. An ‘im/mobility lense’ allows us to understand the barriers that manifest already before access, on different levels, from caring for one’s health in the most basic way in form of sleep, up to the actual access to medical consultation and treatment. The analysis focuses on the implications of criminalized immobility/enforced mobility on an urban scale, the immobile purposes of mobility nodes and public transport for the unsheltered population, and eventually the role of the mobile and mobilizing humanitarian health care.