Spaces between Control and Care: Field Hospitals during the Covid-19 Crisis in Thailand

Abstract

This research examines and questions the role and importance of the field hospitals during the Covid-19 crisis in Thailand, which, after a successful pilot during an outbreak in Samut Sakhon province, became a model throughout the country. It does so through the perspective of an anthropology of space and the concept of care and uses methods of official document analysis alongside ethnographic fieldwork.

           The paper finds that the Thai government considered Covid-19 a national security threat, requiring the proclamation of a state of emergency. The field hospital operates under this emergency with a two-fold objective: 1) to control and stop the spreading of the virus; 2) to care for infected patients. The patient becomes a sick body, subject to control and surveillance, under the continual gaze of healthcare workers. However, this panoptically designed space is subject to change. Through practices of care and personal requests, the field hospital gradually became bearable for migrants. But then, as cases skyrocketed, the balance between control and care burst. As field hospitals reached capacity, Thai citizens received preferential treatment, and migrants were sent back. This crisis raises the question of “whose lives can live long?”