# Enduring and the horizon of repair: French Caribbean post‐stroke rehabilitation amid health inequity

## TL;DR

This paper examines how stroke survivors in Guadeloupe navigate health inequities rooted in colonial history.

## Contribution

It introduces the concept of 'enduring' to describe how patients confront systemic limitations in post-stroke rehabilitation.

## Key findings

- French Caribbean health inequities are deeply tied to colonial legacies of socioracial stratification.
- Stroke survivors in Guadeloupe engage in a form of resistance through their rehabilitation experiences.
- The concept of 'enduring' captures the struggle to live on one's own terms amid institutional neglect.

## Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research with patients and therapists in post‐stroke rehabilitation, this article explores how Guadeloupeans strive to exist on their own terms amid postcolonial health inequities, forms of marginalization and institutional disrepair. I argue that French territorial health inequities must be understood in relation to colonial health inequities and reveal the long history of socioracial stratification in the French Caribbean. I then turn to the experience of a patient to examine how she confronts the limitations of her life chances. As she and other Guadeloupean stroke survivors push back against the contours of life delineated by systemic issues, they exist in close engagement with the horizon of life, in a movement I propose to call enduring.