Social careers, social capital, and immigrants' access barriers to health care: The case of the Argentine minority in New York City (NYC)

This dissertation will present the results of the first ethnographic study on Argentine immigrants living in New York City (NYC). In particular, this study has examined: (a) immigrants' social careers in the US including their changing legal status, their class ascription and social mobility, and their rethorics of social and racial/ethnic inequalities; (b) immigrants' access and utilization barriers and their patterns of health service utilization; and (c) a cultural model of immigrants' health-seeking behaviors based on the circulation of social capital.; This study focused on the migratory paths of senior working-class immigrants (who arrived to NYC in the 1950s and 1960s), and newcomers from working-class and impoverished middle-class backgrounds, who have come to the US since the end of the 1980s. The methods combined in-depth qualitative interviews (unstructured and semi-structure guidelines, and life history interviews) with participant observation and fieldnotes. The study findings can be summarized as follows: (a) Immigrants present different patterns of structural and cultural incorporation in the US, both related to their class origins and class trajectories. Immigrants' reliance on racial/ethnic categories become indicators, in the discursive level, of their inner social hierarchies. (b) While long-term immigrants had more often accomplished their social careers in the US, and therefore had health insurance and were US residents/citizens, newcomers had higher numbers of access and utilization barriers. Elderly newcomers (e.g., tango singers) were exposed to multiple jeopardies in terms of their major health risks and greater access barriers. (c) Wider informal networks with greater degrees of multiplexity (rich in social capital, such as the Manhattan tango world) were more successful in the circulation of health capital than denser, more homogeneous ones. (d) Immigrants' therapeutic eclecticism led them to combine different healing practices, including attending health facilities when visiting their country. (e) Latinos and Argentine physicians performed as health brokers by assisting immigrants to access the US health system, on the basis of being involved in reciprocal relationships in different social settings.