Health policy and systems researchers (HPSRs) in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) aim to influence health systems planning, costing, policy and implementation. Yet, there is still much that we do not know about the types of health systems evidence that are most compelling and impactful to policymakers and community groups, the factors that facilitate the research to decision-making process and the real-world challenges faced when translating research findings into practice in different contexts. Drawing on an analysis of HPSR from LMICs presented at the Fifth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research (HSR 2018), we argue that while there is a recognition in policy studies more broadly about the role of co-production, collective ownership and the value of localised HPSR in the evidence-to-policy discussion, ‘ownership’ of research at country level is a research uptake catalyst that needs to be further emphasised, particularly in the HPSR context. We consider embedded research, participatory or community-initiated research and emergent/responsive research processes, all of which are ‘owned’ by policymakers, healthcare practitioners/managers or community members. We embrace the view that ownership of HPSR by people directly affected by health problems connects research and decision-making in a tangible way, creating pathways to impact.

Relying on the experiences of migrant patients, research on migration and health in South Africa has documented a particular concern with public health care providers as indiscriminately practicing 'medical xenophobia'. This article argues that there is more complexity, ambivalence, and a range of possible experiences of non-nationals in South Africa's public health care system than the current extant literature on 'medical xenophobia' has suggested. Based upon in-depth interviews with frontline health care providers and participant observation at a public health care clinic in Musina sub-District, this article demonstrates how discretion may play a crucial role in inclusive health care delivery to migrants in a country marred by high xenophobic sentiment. It finds that in spite of several institutional and policy-related challenges, frontline health care providers in Musina provided public health care services and HIV treatment to black African migrants who are often at the receiving end of xenophobic sentiment and violence. The article concludes that citizenship, nationality or legal status alone do not appear to tell us much as 'bureaucratic incorporation' and 'therapeutic citizenship' are some of the modalities through which migrants are constantly being (re)defined by some of South Africa's health care providers.

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This article’s purpose is to analyse the political work of binaries used in both domestic and global migration governance responses with a particular focus on Zimbabwean “survival migration” at the Zimbabwe–South Africa border. This article finds that there is peculiar complementarity between South Africa’s domestic migration governance framework and global migration governance frameworks aimed at a migration management approach. This article argues that this nice fit normalises the ostensibly clear distinction between migrants and refugees to deny protection to deserving asylum-seekers, which is productive in serving the political interests of the South African government. Without access to the appropriate papers and encountering a border refugee reception office that has developed de facto gatekeeping measures to prevent them from seeking asylum, as well as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees field office that perceives them as economic migrants, many Zimbabweans living in South Africa occupy a liminal area of categorisation and protection. Hence, the possibilities of the global migration governance providing legitimacy to exclusionary practices at the national level in South Africa are immense. This points to the need for serious engagement with “survival migration” as a category of mobility in analysis, policy, law as well as practice.