The Global Hospital

Work in hospitals has become a subject of significant political and economic challenges. At the same time, it serves as the foundation of modern medicine and care. People from diverse professional backgrounds, nationalities, experiences, and expertise turn hospitals into "global spaces" of collaboration. This international cooperation project (Bern University of Applied Sciences, University of St. Gallen, and University of Vienna) investigates how these entangled forms of work and labour shape the healthcare system and enable daily healthcare provision. Healthcare relies not just on doctors and licensed/academic nursing staff, who tend to be particularly visible. Instead, cleaning and kitchen staff, as well as care providers in generalmostly women with transnational migration backgroundsconstitute the backbone of daily operations. These daily routines serve as the starting point for ethnographic research in hospitals in Austria and Switzerland. Ethnographic research foregrounds the daily experiences and encounters of hospital staff. Everyday practices, work routines, and team interactions provide insights into how nursing and service personnel create the infrastructural basis for clinical care. By simultaneously considering both groups, we aim to expand the current state of research, which often reproduces professional boundaries. In this context, we are particularly interested in how the labour activities that enable medical caresuch as cleaning, nutrition, emotional support, or relational workare entangled in hospitals. Our goal is to take a holistic view of this collaborationfrom collegial leadership to cleaning staffand understand how healthcare in hospitals occurs across professional boundaries, nationalities, and funds of knowledge in everyday hospital life. The project will contribute to a better understanding of the global entanglements of labour, mobility/migration, and knowledge in Austrian and Swiss hospitals from the perspective of local workers. Participatory formats will open up spaces within the hospital to make the project results visible and renegotiate them in the process.