Aim of the study Medicine has been criticized for over-emphasizing biological aspects of health and disease while neglecting social determinants. However, the last decades witnessed the rise of a strand of medical theorizing that proposed a biopsychosocial perspective on health and disease. This article investigates from ethnographic perspectives the extent to which contemporary biopsychosocial medicine succeeds in providing medical care to asylum-seekers in order to grasp societal influences on health and illness. Methods A mix of ethnographic methods including narrative interviews, semi-structured interviews and participant observation was used. Results Using examples of legal restrictions in patients' access to care and language barriers, the ethnographic material showed that physicians regularly failed to take asylum seekers' health-related life-world scientifically into account. Instead, they routinely improvised solutions or deferred responsibility for finding solutions to other agents. Conclusions Approaches employed in the social sciences especially in medical anthropology - could help alleviate these difficulties that result in sub-standard care, and should therefore be integrated into medical teaching and postgraduate education. Concurrently, theoretical and methodological gaps that might also concern other groups of patients might be closed.
