When Words Fail: International Migrants’ Experiences with Language Barriers in the Turkish Healthcare System

Abstract

This study aims to reveal the language-based challenges migrants face in accessing and utilizing health care services, as well as the solution strategies they adopt, based on qualitative research conducted with 57 migrants from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran who migrated to Turkey. The data were collected in Eskişehir over a 10-month period in 2023. The findings resulted in the emergence of four main themes. The f irst theme, fragile independence, illustrates how migrants attempt to overcome language barriers through personal initiatives, such as using translation tools or self-medication. The second theme, solidaristic dependency, highlights how migrants rely on informal networks, family members, or paid interpreters to access healthcare services and demonstrate solidarity. The third theme, isolation, uncovers the processes of exclusion, withdrawal, and silencing experienced by migrants who lack linguistic, social, and economic resources. The experiences reflected in these three themes lead migrants from different backgrounds to perceive intergroup inequality driven by language barriers, which is encapsulated in the final theme, hierarchy. This study makes an original contribution by demonstrating that language functions not only as a key social determinant of health but also as a mechanism of power that actively produces, maintains, and reinforces social and structural inequalities within and among migrant communities.

Keywords

• International migration
• migrant health
• language barrier
• sociology
• Turkey

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