ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the health sector constitutes a central arena where flexible forms of migration assistance can unfold within a broader hostile migration policy environment. The chapter explores the expanding role of migrant translators in Thai hospitals and their role in migration assistance. It is impossible to understand this assistance without appreciating how the health sector both enables and is enabled by a humanitarian ethos premised on addressing human suffering. Building on Didier Fassin's work on biolegitimacy, the chapter argues that humanitarian principles within health provision contribute to a humanitarian space where aid actors use health services as a springboard for acting on labour abuse and exploitation. Furthermore, the chapter shows how this contributes to a expansion of the field for both formal and informal safe migration interventions as it broadens interventions beyond the legal and the political to the realm of the moral. As such, the health sector constitutes an important humanitarian space which enables safe migration interventions to unfold.
