Caring, managing, waiting. Strategies of migrant women facing restrictive contexts of access to health care

Abstract

This article analyzes the different strategies deployed by native migrant women from Bolivia and northeast Argentina to confront the barriers to access to the health system during their migratory journeys linked to agricultural work in Argentina. Part of the study results on the health, illness, and care experiences of migrant women working in agriculture are presented. The theoretical approach of the study links feminist and Latin American social medicine conceptual tools. An ethnographic and flexible qualitative design that prioritizes the technique of life stories and participatory observation is proposed. Fieldwork was developed between 2014 and 2018 in the town of Ugarteche, an agricultural territory located in the northern oasis of the province of Mendoza (Argentina). It was concluded that, in the face of restrictive contexts of access to medical care and discrimination suffered in the health system, migrant women interpose management and care practices that allow them to preserve their health and that of their groups. They also constitute creative strategies aimed at learning biomedicine and recovering knowledge from their communities of origin and confronting institutional mistreatment, thus they overcome barriers to access medical care and deal with frightening and expelling contexts. This article contributes to an underexplored area of migration and health studies since it addresses both: the difficulties migrant women face in accessing health care and the strategies they deploy to overcome these barriers and their contributions to their host communities through their daily care work.