Access to Health Care by African Migrants in Brazil: Flows, Barriers, and Intersectionalities

This study examines the challenges faced by African migrants in Brazil in terms of access to public health care. Despite the constitutional principle of universality that guides the Unified Health System (SUS), the daily experience of these individuals reveals a series of institutional, symbolic, and racial barriers marked by exclusion, invisibility, and discriminatory practices. A qualitative and exploratory approach was adopted, based on a literature review and document analysis, with theoretical contributions from public health, intersectionality, structural racism, and necropolitics. The results indicate that, although there are protective legal frameworks, such as the Migration Law, African migrants face barriers conditioned by social determinants and discriminatory practices, which render cultural specificities invisible and deepen vulnerabilities. The conclusion is that there is a need for public health policies that incorporate intersectional and anti-racist perspectives, intercultural training for professionals, and the production of disaggregated data.