ABSTRACT
The application of critical frameworks to the study of medical travel can allow us to see medical travel as a consequence of the unequal distribution of medical services, as well as a producer of inequalities. Several authors have explored the factors that play a role in decisions to engage in medical travel and the factors considered when selecting medical travel destinations. The effect of medical travel on medical facilities, staff, and local populations in destination countries has also been explored. The concept of immobility, with its focus on episodes of transition, waiting, emptiness, “stuckness,” and fixity can be useful when exploring shape experiences of failed or never-tried attempts of medical travel. This concept can also be used to explore imagined journeys, their relative immutability and destruction when dreams of travel are abandoned. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.
