How do migrant women and civil servants negotiate health communication? In what ways are their experiences and practices shaped by broader power dynamics in Norwegian healthcare and welfare?
Ingvild Badhwar Valen-Sendstad’s dissertation, Health literacy as ideological work: Migration, language, and communication in the welfare system, explores i) how migrant women on sick leave from work use Norwegian when taking care of their health and ii) how civil servants talk about the work they do to ensure migrant individuals’ access to information and services.
This sociolinguistic study shows that the women engage in a range of health literacy strategies, striving to position themselves as independent, responsible, and hard-working. Some women achieve institutional access to information and services by engaging in brokering with their Norwegian spouses. This strategy also enables civil servants to solve conflicts between many responsibilities and limited resources and power. However, brokering can be unreliable, and may amplify the women’s vulnerability in encounters with the system.
Inequality is also reinforced through language ideologies and norms; this includes mobilization of the linguistic ideal of clarity – present in interviews, interactions, and policy – and the evaluation of some practices as more ‘sanitary’ and ‘health promoting’ than others. Some women internalize these ideals. Self-perceived failure to speak and act according to normative standards is referred to as an explanation for why communication with the state misfires, and why they experience exclusion and lack of access to public services.
On the other hand, the study also shows that some women assert their agency in response to norms and pressure, establishing new forms of belonging and more personally relevant health literacies in Norway.
Ingvild Badhwar Valen-Sendstad successfully defended her dissertation on 13 June 2023.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Multilingualism and governmentality"
Evaluation committee
- Professor Emeritus Cristopher Stroud, University of Western Cape/Stockholm University (first opponent)
- Professor Angela Creese, University of Stirling (second opponent)
- Associate Professor Toril Opsahl, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
- Associate Professor Alessandro Palumbo
Supervisors
- Professor Pia Lane, University of Oslo
- Associate Professor Haley De Korne, University of Oslo
- Professor Alastair Pennycook, University of Technology Sydney,