Date:
Location:
“Health Migrations: The Influence of Transnational Ties on Latin American Immigrants’ Healthcare Practices”
Speaker:
Tiffany Joseph, Research Fellow, Global Social Protections, TSI, Harvard University; Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, Stony Brook University.
"Transnationalism, Social Networks, and Culture: Implications for Health"
Speaker:
Rosalyn Negrón, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Core Faculty in Transnational, Cultural, & Community Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston.
Contact:
John Arroyo
arroyojc@mit.edu
Chairs:
Peggy Levitt, Associate. Chair; Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Wellesley College.
Jocelyn Viterna, Faculty Associate. Associate Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Harvard University.
Abstract (Joseph):
While much research has explored the impact of transnational ties on family relations and structure, gender relations, economic contributions, civic engagement, and racialization processes in home and host countries, less research has explored how immigrants’ transnational lives shape their healthcare behaviors/practices and experiences with the U.S. healthcare system. Using qualitative interviews conducted with a total sample of 170 Latin American immigrants, healthcare professionals, and immigrant/health organization employees in Boston, this paper assesses how Brazilian, Dominican, and Salvadoran immigrants rely on transnational connections to negotiate their health and healthcare practices. Paper findings will contribute to scholarship on immigrant health, healthcare access, and transnational processes in host and home countries.
Abstract (Negrón):
In the US, there are stark differences in health outcomes between first and second-generation immigrants. The reasons for these are not fully understood, partly because not enough is known about how migration trajectories affect health. Existing research on health disparities between first and second-generation immigrants point to cultural / acculturative processes - chiefly the adoption of normative American health beliefs and practices - as key to understanding diminishing health across immigrant generations. But such studies have not taken into account transnationalism, and the ways that transnational activity and transnational ties shape these acculturative processes. The border-spanning social fields that emerge through transnationalism mean that health behaviors and beliefs are situated in both transnational and local ecologies. Working with an ecological model of health, in this presentation we focus on the level of social networks to consider how transnational immigrants’ simultaneous embeddedness in home and host country networks impacts their health. Drawing on two-years of community-based ethnographic research among Brazilians and Dominicans in Boston, we ask three main questions: 1) To what extent does interpersonal influences on the health beliefs and practices of immigrants span both home and host countries? 2) What are the health benefits and costs of maintaining transnational relationships? 3) How is cultural and health knowledge distributed within transnational networks? An overarching goal of this work is to explore what can be learned about transnationalism when we focus the lens on immigrant health.
