Abstract
Background Undocumented migrants (UMs) in the Netherlands face significant barriers to accessing healthcare despite legal entitlements to ‘necessary medical care.’ Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a critical role in facilitating healthcare access for UMs, yet empirical research on their contributions remains limited. This study aims to explore how NGOs perceive their role in facilitating healthcare access for UMs in the Netherlands and how these perceptions align with their actual practices. Methods The research employs a qualitative exploratory design, conducting twelve semi-structured interviews with professionals from various NGOs supporting UMs in the Netherlands. Thematic analysis was used to identify key roles and strategies employed by these organisations. Results The data revealed four main roles: (1) mediating, (2) educating, (3) advocating, and (4) delivering services. The findings suggest that while Dutch NGOs appear to share a common goal of facilitating healthcare access for UMs within the existing Dutch healthcare system, some of their strategies exist outside the regular system, thereby creating a parallel system. This parallel system subsequently results in a discrepancy between how NGOs perceive themselves (i.e., the role they think they should take) and the role they play in practice. Findings further suggest that the Dutch NGOs in this study face a humanitarian-equity dilemma, where limited resources and high pressure from UMs’ immediate needs lead them to prioritize direct assistance over addressing systemic issues. Consequently, many NGO strategies offer temporary solutions that help individual cases but fail to integrate UMs into the regular healthcare system sustainably. Conclusions Dutch NGOs play a critical role in facilitating healthcare access for UMs in the Netherlands. Despite their invaluable efforts in addressing immediate needs, NGOs risk legitimizing a parallel system that allows the state to retreat from its welfare duties. To facilitate lasting change, NGOs should focus more on educational and *Correspondence: Mara A. Yerkes M.A.Yerkes@uu.nl Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy o