Social provisioning and transit migration in the Colombia-Panama border

This study focuses on the ways perceptions and realities of transit migration shape the poli-tics and practices of health-related social provisioning for transit migrants in the Colombian side of the Darien Gap, particularly in the municipalities of Turbo and Necoclí. It contributes to understanding the logics of inclusion and exclusion that justify which services are provided to this population and how. Moreover, it studies the intersection between the vulnerabilities of transit migrants and the precarious conditions that they find in this border zone. This research is based on 15 interviews with formal actors involved in the provisioning of health and 12 residents of Turbo and Necoclí, as well as on observations in strategic locations where migrants access public health services. This study finds that transit migrants arrive to health provisioning system in which non-governmental actors support and complement the public provisioning of health for transit migrants and that the conception of transit migrants as outsiders of the system of provisioning is problematized in a context in which legal citizen-ship does not guarantee social rights.