‘Te Abre un Mundo’ │‘A World Opens to You’ : In and Out of the Clinical Gaze in Tijuana Migrant Healthcare

Abstract

Climate change, increasing displacement, and the hardening of borders have driven a need for more medical care in border spaces worldwide. This thesis offers an ethnographic glance into one organization, which I will call the Coalition for Refugee Medicine (CRM), located in Tijuana, Mexico. CRM works to create a sustainable system of services to boost the health of migrants and refugees. It moves beyond biological, mechanistic views of health to also focus on mental health, material health, hygienic health, social health, and spiritual health. I argue that CRM disrupts the conventional boundaries of humanitarian aid and forges a new model for engagement with migrant healthcare. My thesis details the organization’s clinical gaze, born both from the structure of the organization itself and the sensibilities of the on-the-ground providers. While not without flaws, CRM presents an exciting model of an organization that juggles the (seemingly) competing priorities of structural competency and individual care.