Neoliberal Governance and International Medical Travel in Malaysia
International medical travel (IMT), where people cross national borders in the pursuit of health care, has become a growing phenomenon. With many of the countries currently being promoted as IMT destinations located in the developing world, IMT poses a significant challenge to popular assumptions about who provides and receives care since it inverts and diversifies presumed directionalities of care.
This book analyses the development of international medical travel in Malaysia, by looking at the benefits and challenges of providing health care to non-Malaysians. It challenges embedded assumptions about the sources, directions and political value of care. The author situates the Malaysian case study at the fruitful cross-section of a range of literatures on transnational mobility, hospitality, therapeutic landscapes and medical diplomacy to examine their roles in the construction of national identity. The book thus contributes to wider debates that have emerged around the changing character of global health governance, and is of use to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies as well as Politics and Health and Social Care.
Meghann Ormond is Assistant Professor in the Cultural Geography Department at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. She is a human geographer focusing on questions of transnational mobility, health and care in her research.
Routledge Pacific Rim Geographies
Series Editors: John Connell, Lily Kong and John Lea
1 Landscapes of Globalization
Human Geographies of Economic Change in the Philippines
Philip Kelly
2 Sex Work in Southeast Asia
The Place of Desire in a Time of AIDS
Lisa Law
3 Urbanisation in the Island Pacific
Towards Sustainable Development
John Connell and John Lea
4 Malaysia, Modernity and the Multimedia Super Corridor
A Critical Geography of Intelligent Landscapes
Tim Bunnell
5 Made in the Philippines
Gendered Discourses and the Making of Migrants
James A. Tyner
6 Environment, Development and Change in Rural Asia-Pacific
Between Local and Global
Edited by John Connell and Eric Waddell
7 Gated Communities in China
Privilege and the Moral Politics of the Good Life
Pow Choon-Piew
8 Cambodia's Neoliberal Order
Violence, Authoritarianism, and the Contestation of Public Space
Simon Springer
9 Neoliberal Governance and International Medical Travel in Malaysia
Meghann Ormond
Neoliberal Governance and
International Medical Travel
in Malaysia
Meghann Ormond
First published 2013
by Routledge
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2013 Meghann Ormond
Segments of were published by the author as Shifting Subjects of Health-care: Placing Medical Tourism in the Context of Malaysian Domestic Health-care Reform, Asia Pacific Review 52(3) (December 2011): 24759. It is used with permission from the publisher John Wiley & Sons.
Segments of were published by the author as Claiming Cultural Competence: The Promotion of Multi-ethnic Malaysia as a Medical Tourism Destination, in C.M. Hall (ed.) Medical Tourism: The Ethics, Regulation, and Marketing of Health Mobility, London: Routledge, 2012. It is used with permission from Routledge.
Segments of were published by the author as Medical Tourism, Medical Exile: Responding to the Cross-border Pursuit of Healthcare in Malaysia, in C. Minca and T. Oakes (eds) Real Tourism: Practice, Care and Politics in Contemporary Travel, London: Routledge, 2011, 14361. It is used with permission from Routledge.
The right of Meghann Ormond to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in PublicationData
Ormond, Meghann.
Neoliberal governance and international medical travel in Malaysia / Meghann Ormond.
p. cm. (Routledge Pacific RIM geographies ; 9)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Title. II. Series: Routledge Pacific Rim geographies (2007) ; 9.
[DNLM: 1. Medical TourismMalaysia. 2. PoliticsMalaysia. WA 108]
362.1095951-dc23
2012023257
ISBN: 978-0-415-50238-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-07756-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books
For Mary MacKay and scar Bouzas Iglesias
Contents
Illustrations
Figures
Tables
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to my family, friends and colleagues. My dear MM, OBI, EK, AK, FE, KC, SM and MM have been gentle and intelligent pillars of strength over the years. You have taught me so much.
I am deeply grateful to Matthew Sothern and Lisa Law for their confidence in me, their keenness to share their knowledge and the many forms of support they have extended over the years. John Connell, Lynn Staeheli, Chan Chee Khoon, Beth Kangas and Jason Yap also provided valuable feedback and support at significant moments throughout the research and writing-up process.
Some of the early thinking for this book was developed while working as a researcher at the University of Lisbon's Centro de Estudos Geograficos, undertaking work on health care entitlement and access for immigrants. I am grateful to Lucinda Fonseca and my former colleagues there (AA, AE, AS, DM, FM and MB) for the opportunities they provided to explore together diverse dimensions of transnational mobility. DR and his family opened my eyes and heart to new worlds and encouraged me to thrive wherever I happened to be.
Sincere thanks go to Jamilah Mohamad at the University of Malaya's Geography Department in Kuala Lumpur for hosting me during my fieldwork. I am deeply thankful to the many respondents in Malaysia, Singapore, the United States and throughout the world whose professional and personal experiences have so thoroughly deepened my fascination with, and enriched my grasp of, international medical travel. The creative energies and generosity of friends and colleagues in Malaysia (MO, JC, PK, NK and EW) never cease to inspire.
Many thanks to the University of St Andrews School of Geography and Geosciences in the United Kingdom, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal and Wageningen University's Cultural Geography Chair Group in the Netherlands for providing me with financial support for my research in Malaysia and time to work on the book. I am grateful to the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister's Department of Malaysia for the authorization to carry out fieldwork in the scope of this project in 20078. Adrie van t Veer's great cartographic work and Lauren Wagner's editorial eye are both greatly appreciated. Thanks finally to the editors of the Pacific Rim Geographies series and to those at the Asian Studies division at Routledge for making this book possible.
