Start date: September 1996.
End date: September 2000.

Project description:
My research, placed within the broad field of the comparative analysis of public policies, is an analysis of the policies developed in a set of Western European countries to address the issues raised in the domain of health by the presence of a more or less large foreign populations (residing in the country de facto, although not always de iure). The main questions that I will try to answer could be phrased as: Why is it that health policies towards immigrant populations differ across countries? Why those chosen policies are implemented with specific institutional arrangements? Why is the third sector supposed to play any role at all within those policies?

The literature on agenda setting, policy design, and policy choice has paid special attention to the way in which the content of a given policy matches with the political context in which that policy is elaborated. Within this approach there is the assumption that the political sphere represents the more or less organised interests of different «publics», which could be affected by the policy. The absence of «publics» implies that the issue networks, or the policy communities are weakly developed, the beliefs systems concerning the framing of the problem and its proposed solutions are only tentative and dominated by technocratic expert opinions, while policy discussions take place in spheres apart of the public scrutiny.

Within the debate about the level of equalisation of rights and duties between citizens and non-citizens, I will try to test the hypothesis that health policies towards immigrant populations constitute a set of "policies without publics". A second aspect intimately linked to the former is the extent to which advocacy coalitions may have appeared to defend (by defining) the interests of the immigrants. Third sector organisations (NGO's, immigrant associations, charities, etc.) may have played a significant role in the elaboration of those policies by constituting themselves in "the voice of those without voice", therefore conditioning the shape of the policies, and the institutional arrangements that will deal with its implementation. The study of the role played by values and ideas (Human Rights, notions of nationality, citizenship, and the philosophies of incorporation of those immigrants to the host societies), will be considered within a socio-historical institutional analysis that will include supranational institutions (EU, ILO, UN), state agencies (at the national, regional and local level), and third sector organisations (NGO's, Charities).

Research methods:
The research is carried out through the analysis of official documents, and reports. After that research of primary sources, I plan to conduct interviews with a series of policy-makers, community leaders, and health specialists in the three countries included in my study.

Planned output:
The thesis will provide a comparative analysis of the different policies followed in countries with different immigration experiences, to solve a series of problems that arise from the presence of increasingly diverse communities of immigrants. Some conclusions could be made about good practices and specific schemes to solve particular problems (coverage for undocumented immigrants, specific pathologies, etc).

Supervisor:
Vincent Wright, Nuffield College, Oxford University.

Funding organisation:
I am currently doing a MSc course in Social Policy and Planning at the London School of Economics with a grant from the British Council and the "La Caixa" Foundation.

After September I will continue my research in Madrid, at the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences of the Juan March Institute.