Positively Belonging in Peru?: Venezuelan Migrants with HIV/AIDS at the intersections of Pharmaceutical Citizenship, Biosocialities, Race and Biomedicine.

8,000+ Venezuelans living with HIV have fled their country and its crumbling health-system in search of life-saving medication. Yet, lived realities of pharmaceutical infrastructures and obstacles of access are scarcely known in host countries where they migrate, resulting in invisiblised migrant-experience and unaddressed HIV/refugee-related stigma.

How the project will look: In collaboration with the Centre-for-Excellence-in-Chronic-Diseases(CRONICAS) at the Cayetano-Heredia-University(UPCH), Lima Museum-of-Memory,-Tolerance-&-Social-Inclusion(LUM), UCL-Culture, ONIGO-design-studios, and migrants living with HIV, we will place digitally-literate Peruvian & UK publics directly into migrants 'shoes' so that they can experience authentic pharmaceutical obstacles, develop deeper understandings of migrant experience, and engage meaningfully with the research. This will be achieved through developing a virtual 'pharmacy escape-room' (VER), designed collaboratively with HIV-positive Venezuelans, to tell real-world stories and involve the public in migrant worlds with the decisions/obstacles they face on a 'lived', experiential level. Post-initiative, collaborative discussions will be held between migrants and VER 'players', encouraging the public to greater value such people-centred health research, empower those with HIV to communicate their health-struggles, and address the HIV empathy gap through collaboratively brainstorming stigma reduction strategies.