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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Life-Course Epidemiology and Social Inequalities in Health
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1485933
This article is part of the Research Topic Racial and Ethnic Inequalities in Multiple Long-term Conditions: Current Trends and Viable Solutions View all articles

Racism in German Healthcare: Uncovering the Construction and Silencing of the "Other"

Provisionally accepted
Tanja Hristova Gangarova Tanja Hristova Gangarova 1*Melike Yildiz Melike Yildiz 2Lina Kabangu Lina Kabangu 3
  • 1 German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Berlin, Germany
  • 2 Familia+Migra Network, Berlin, Germany
  • 3 CSE Caritas, Essen, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    While the impact of racism on healthcare interactions has been researched extensively in many parts of the world, substantive studies on healthcare-related racism in Europe, and particularly in Germany, remain scarce. This paper builds on a study that applies Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and aims to explore healthcare users' experiences of racism within German healthcare. Community members were trained as peer researchers and given support as they conducted a total of six focus group discussions that involved a total of 14 study participants: these participants were organized into two subsamples of seven participants each (subsample one: Black, African, Afrodiasporic healthcare users; subsample two: healthcare users perceived or self-describing as Muslim), and each subsample had three focus group discussions. A democratic approach to qualitative data analysis was applied in the form of the DEPICT model. The data analysis developed iteratively, with inductive and deductive steps complementing one another. The study results illustrate how the collaboratively developed concepts of being treated as "other" and being made inaudible can advance our understanding of the forms, dynamics, and effects of racism in healthcare encounters. Because this paper focuses on the process of racialization, it helps illumine the mechanisms of subtle racism, which, as study results suggest, can damage healthcare users, cause a loss of trust in the system, and lead to invisibilization of racism in healthcare. By doing so, it draws attention to areas for change and transformation, to larger power structures that must be challenged in order to ensure responsive and equal healthcare for all healthcare users. The application of CBPR and, particularly, the engagement of racialized healthcare users in the research process offered pathways for analyzing the subtle, otherwise hard-to-detect mechanisms of racism, and for learning from the wisdom of situated knowledges.

    Keywords: Racism, othering, silencing, CBPR, healthcare, Germany

    Received: 25 Aug 2024; Accepted: 19 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gangarova, Yildiz and Kabangu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tanja Hristova Gangarova, German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Berlin, Germany

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