Overview
Around the world, the immigrant body has long been deemed a potential site of disease that may taint the native population and, even today, medical exams are a standard requirement to obtain immigration visas and work permits. However, historically, immigrants’ experiences of ill-health and healthcare in their new homes are a much less-well documented aspect of the migratory trajectory.
This paper will use Italian immigrants in Great Britain since 1945 as a case study through which to examine the interaction of immigration and healthcare provision. I will adopt a life-stages approach, examining key moments at which Italian immigrants engaged with healthcare settings – namely when giving birth, during periods of ill-health, and in old age. Of particular interest will be an exploration of factors impacting upon access to NHS care (e.g. gender, age, linguistic competence) and the role of community-specific services, e.g. the Italian Hospital, active in London until 1990, and the Villa Scalabrini Italian nursing home in Hertfordshire, which opened in the 1980s. Using a mixture of archival documents, community newspapers and oral history interviews, this research seeks to build a nuanced portrait of how Italians in England have experienced and confronted life, death and illness over the last 80 years.
Speaker
Dr Selena Daly is an Associate Professor of Italian Studies at University College London. She is the author of Italian Futurism and the First World War (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and Emigrant Soldiers: Mobilising Italians Abroad in the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2025). She is currently writing a global history of Italian emigration from Marco Polo to today for Viking Penguin (US), Hodder & Stoughton (UK) and Mondadori (Italy). Before joining UCL, she was at Royal Holloway, University of London and University College Dublin, and was a Fulbright Scholar at University of California, Santa Barbara.
This talk will ne chaired by Dr Bianca Gaudenzi.
Details
This is a hybrid event, which will take place in-person in the Gatsby Room (Chancellor's Centre) and also on Zoom.
If you would like to attend online, please register for the Zoom link.
Refreshments will be available for the in-person audience.
Access
This event will take place in Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Wolfson Humanities Society
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