Description
This paper investigates hospitality for migrant pregnant women in the NHS by analysing the ethical dilemmas faced by midwives when providing maternity care for those who are not eligible for free health services. While providing healthcare for migrant pregnant women, midwives are committed to the betterment of pregnancy outcomes by offering them a cordial welcome into the NHS. However, the Charging Regulations have operated data-sharing policies between the NHS and the Home Office, which allow for immigration enforcement through the delivery of health services. As a consequence, while being hospitable to women under their care, midwives are also enabling their arrest, detention and deportation if they are not eligible for free maternity services and unable to cover their costs. By drawing on reports by maternity rights charity Maternity Action, this paper argues that hospitality offered by midwives to migrant women constitutes a practice of welcome which, at the same, enables the enactment of hostility towards foreign bodies marked by pregnancy. Informed by Jacques Derrida’s notion of hospitality, this paper illuminates how midwives find themselves within moral dilemmas which imply acting “unethically” in their attempts to be ethical towards the migrant pregnant women that they attend to.
