Transnational health protection strategies and other health-seeking behavior among undocumented and indigenous dairy workers in a rural new immigrant destination

Julie C. Keller and Nuria Alishio-Caballero

Social Science & Medicine, 2021, vol. 284, issue C

Abstract: Latin American immigrants in new immigrant destinations (NIDs) experience numerous barriers that negatively impact their access to healthcare. Yet the wide range of health-seeking behaviors deployed in response to these barriers–particularly among those who are undocumented and indigenous–are not well understood. Further, studies of immigrant health in NIDs tend to take place in those locations, rather than using a multi-sited design. Building on NID scholarship, the transnational social protection literature, and work on structural vulnerability, this study uses a multi-sited research design to examine the health-seeking behaviors that undocumented and indigenous immigrant workers exhibit in a rural NID. Data consist of interviews conducted intermittently from 2010 to 2017 in Mexico and the U.S. with 56 individuals from indigenous villages in Veracruz who worked on dairy farms in Wisconsin and Minnesota, as well as expert interviews. We found numerous barriers to healthcare that together constituted a limited resource environment for undocumented dairy workers. This accentuated their structural vulnerability and influenced responses to health problems. Strategies among undocumented and indigenous immigrant dairy workers in a rural NID included: self-care, delaying care, relying on local ties, cross-border health consultation, cross-border health packages, and returning home for health. Furthermore, we found that women in the family or community often facilitated cross-border health activity, and that traditional folk medicine was common. We argue that these workers' health protection strategies not only serve to secure their individual status as productive workers, but on a larger scale, they play an important part in preserving the migrant labor regime in this rural NID. Further, we argue that the indigenous knowledge that is transmitted largely by women via immigrants’ informal social networks is an important yet often invisible part of the carework that maintains this relatively new labor force.

Keywords: Transnational social protection; Health-seeking behavior; Structural vulnerability; Undocumented immigrants; Indigenous knowledge; Rural new immigrant destinations; Dairy farms; Latin American immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621005451
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:284:y:2021:i:c:s0277953621005451

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114213

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().