Immigrazione e Diritto alla Salute: una prospettiva psico-sociale

The present paper focuses on the current perception of “human rights” from a social-psychological point of view. In particular, we consider Health and Well-Being, wandering whether these are to be considered as fundamental Human Rights and to what extent this view is shared by individuals and groups in a given community. To this aim, we focus on the Italian present situation, wherein some specific norms have been recently enacted. Some of these are directed, in particular, to regulate the medical caregivers’ action in favor of immigrant patients with no residence permit. Different orientations are compared with each other, by referring, in particular, to the July/2009 Italian Government Law and to the December/2009 Regional Law of Apulia, and considering, in this way, both national and local levels. Of course, we focused ,mostly, on the social-psychological issues, by considering, in particular, the population social representations and the caregivers’ social judgments as to the “status” of Health Care : we wander whether, in their view, this is to be deemed a fundamental human right. Some first findings from our studies in progress are briefly recalled, the role of people’s attitudes and shared beliefs in supporting the effectiveness of norms is emphasized, by considering in this lights some seminal studies on the social representations of human rights (Doise et Al., 1999)