Meeting the health and social needs of pregnant asylum seekers, midwifery students' perspectives

Abstract

Citation: Haith-Cooper, M., Bradshaw, G. (2013) Meeting the health and social needs of pregnant asylum seekers; midwifery students perspectives. Part 1; Dominant discourses and midwifery students. Nurse Education Today, 33 (9) 1008-1013.Copyright statement: © 2013 Elsevier. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's selfarchiving policy.Meeting the health and social needs of pregnant asylum seekers, midwifery students' perspectives Part 1; dominant discourses and midwifery students Current literature has indicated a concern about standards of maternity care experienced by pregnant women who are seeking asylum. As the next generation of midwives, it is important that students are educated in a way that prepares them to effectively care for these women. To understand how this can be achieved, it is important to explore what asylum seeking means to midwifery students. This article is the first of three parts and reports on one objective from a wider doctorate study. It identifies dominant discourses that influenced the perceptions of a group of midwifery students' about the pregnant asylum seeking woman. The study was designed from a social constructivist perspective, with contextual knowledge being constructed by groups of people, influenced by underpinning dominant discourses, depending on their social, cultural and historical positions in the world. In a United Kingdom University setting, during year two of a pre-registration midwifery programme, eleven midwifery students participated in the study. Two focus group interviews using a problem based learning scenario as a trigger for discussion were conducted. In addition, three students were individually interviewed to explore issues in more depth and two students' written reflections on practice were used to generate data. Following a critical discourse analysis, dominant discourses were identified which appeared to influence the way in which asylum seekers were perceived. The findings suggested an underpinning ideology around the asylum seeker being different and of a criminal persuasion. Although the pregnant woman seeking asylum was considered as deserving of care, the same discourses appeared to influence the way in which she was constructed. However, as the study progressed, through reading alternative sources of literature, some students appeared to question these discourses. These findings have implications for midwifery education in encouraging students to challenge negative discourses and construct positive perceptions of asylum seeking

Striving for excellence in maternity care: The Maternity Stream of the City of Sanctuary

“…In the UK, there is a dominant negative discourse around asylum seeking, with the public questioning AS&R genuineness and potential for criminality (Aspinall and Watters, 2010;Haith-Cooper and Bradshaw, 2013b). There is also a general confusion about the difference between AS&R and economic migrants, who choose to come to the UK to work rather than being forced to leave their home country (Greenslade, 2005).…”