Other Socially Constructed Vulnerabilities: Focus on People Living with HIV/AIDS and Internal Migrants

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the other socially constructed vulnerabilities with a special focus on People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHAs) and internal migrants. The systematic denial of equal rights to a specific group of individuals through social sanction, programmes and policies would be social construction of vulnerability. PLHAs face stigma and discrimination which have negative social consequences (particularly among women PLHAs), decreased quality of life and systematic denial to access health and healthcare services. The large population of internal migrants also faces stigma and discrimination leading to lower access to general healthcare and maternal and child health services. Migration is a major contributor to ill health among adults and children. These vulnerabilities collude against the health and well-being of migrant PLHAs. The diagnosis and treatment of HIV among migrants is convoluted and often delayed. Their women partners face layered inequalities in accessing health care and social justice. Lower socio-economic status and being a woman often contributes to the social construction of vulnerability among PLHAs and internal migrants. Migration itself should be considered as an axis of health inequity, in this context. The neo-liberal policies prevailing in the current consumerist society, compounded by public programmes and policies insensitive to the specific needs of PLHAs and internal migrants; layered by the stigma and discrimination and compounded by layered vulnerabilities due to gender, class and caste leads to systemic denial of access to health and health care resulting in health inequities among PLHAs and internal migrants.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

—Nelson Mandela