Dislocated Ecologies: A Bibliometric Triangulation of Forced Migration, Medical Education, and Learning Environments in Contemporary Europe (2020–2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52340/healthecosoc.2026.10.02.2Keywords:
forced migration, medical education, learning ecologies, Europe, communities of practice, educational systems, health inequalitiesAbstract
This article investigates the conceptual intersections between forced migration, medical education, and learning ecologies/environments in Europe through a triangulated bibliometric analysis of PubMed-indexed literature from 2020–2025. Anchored in ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner), perspectives on learning ecologies (Barron; Jackson), and communities of practice theory (Wenger), the research maps three networks of co-occurrence of terms corresponding to each domain and compares dominant themes, conceptual bridges, and significant absences. The results indicate the existence of weakly connected “thematic ecologies”: the literature on forced migration (FM) focuses on vulnerability, health inequalities and the psychosocial impact of conflict; the literature on medical education (ME) focuses on curriculum, simulation and student wellbeing; and the literature on learning environments (EE) in health describes clinical ecologies and workplace learning, without integrating forced migration as a contextual factor. Triangulation shows that the intersection of FM–ME–EE is almost non-existent in the analysed corpus, which signals a conceptual and public policy gap, with particular relevance for Central and Eastern Europe, where recent refugee arrivals (including from Ukraine) have reconfigured educational and health infrastructures. The article proposes the development of an integrative framework of “learning ecologies in forced migration” and discusses implications for curriculum reform, trauma-informed training, and the inclusion of civic actors and migrant-led organisations in educational design.
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