Paper short abstract:

This presentation introduces the concept of welfare-bricolage - the practices by which residents of superdiverse neighbourhoods combine formal and informal health services across public, private and third sectors - as well as the interdisciplinary methods used for studying these processes.

Paper long abstract:

Increasing population complexity, heterogeneity and pace of change in the context of globalisation demand a rethinking of healthcare policies and practices. How residents living in superdiverse urban neighbourhoods access healthcare according to their differing needs and resources is the focus of the Welfare-Bricolage Project UPWEB (Understanding the practice and developing the concept of welfare bricolage). We conduct comparative research in four European cities (Brimingham, Lisbon, Uppsala and Bremen) through the analytical framework of "welfare bricolage": the practice by which individuals combine formal and informal, secular and religious, local, transnational and web-based health services across public, private and third sectors.

The interdisciplinary UPWEB-project combines ethnographic methods - such as mapping, participant observation and qualitative in-depth interviews, with healthcare receivers and providers - and epidemiological quantitative approaches. Different welfare bricolage models emerging during ethnographic research will be further explored and compared cross-nationally through epidemiological surveys. An important aspect of our research is the collaboration with community researchers, who live and work in the neighbourhoods we study. The multi-methods toolkit serves to bridge existing empirical and methodological gaps between epidemiology and ethnography and to produce new knowledge of relevance to academics, policymakers and practitioners.

This presentation introduces the concept of welfare bricolage - the process by which residents in superdiverse urban neighbourhoods mix wide ranging and diverse forms of provision, support and knowledge - and the interdisciplinary and collaborative methods used for studying these processes. A main focus will be the interplay of anthropological and epidemiological research methods within an interdisciplinary team.