Iraqis’ Cancer Itineraries

Abstract

Since 2003, Iraqis with cancer have increasingly been forced to travel across borders for treatment unavailable at home. Two cases of Iraqi cancer patients traveling across borders to Beirut, Lebanon highlight how such travel for healthcare places enormous strains on kinship networks. While those networks enable the cobbling together of resources and information, the highly contingent character of the care-seeking journeys speaks not only to the uncertainties of chronic illness but also to the difficulties of navigating healthcare under conditions of war. The work of survival within wartime Iraq increasingly involves transnational strategies of medical travel, unsettling a picture of living and dying tethered to local relations and institutions.