ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the diversity of medical travel experiences by outlining how these vary throughout the different stages of treatment and travel. It reviews some of the medical travel research through the lens of the concept of differential mobility empowerments used in the critical (im)mobilities framework. This concept seeks to bring power relations to the forefront of analysis by considering that not all who want to move are able to do so. Salazar Parrenas has argued that imagined possibilities are shaped by political, economic, and cultural processes that determine what is available or possible for certain individuals. The chapter deals with an analysis of the imagination, as imagined notions of potential travel have a direct impact on individual’s care-seeking and travel-seeking practices. A. Speier represents medical travelers as consumers shopping for discount treatments. They researched different treatment options, international providers and talked to other patients, or consumers, who had received these services.
