Living on the margins : illness and healthcare among Peruvian migrants in Chile
De los Angeles Núnez Carrasco, L.
Citation
De los Angeles Núnez Carrasco, L. (2008, September 16). Living on the margins : illness and healthcare among Peruvian migrants in Chile. Retrieved from
https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13105
Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version
License: Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden
Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/13105
Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable).
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Part 1
Displacement, Discrimination and Distress
art one consists of three chapters and presents the theoretical framework and the methodology which guides this study.
Chapter one focuses on the relationship between migration and health. It specifically discusses the dynamics associated with transnational migration as migrant’s everyday lives are framed within transnational social fields and it explores the linkages that exist between these dynamics and migrants’
wellbeing. It also discusses discrimination that often accompanies migration and debates its effects on the health of migrants in the host society.
Discrimination is based on an explicit devaluation of the other’s difference – race, gender, sexual orientation, age or any other difference. Peruvian migrants in Chile are discriminated against on the basis of their national-racial identity.
The variety of dimensions in which discrimination is manifest is discussed here, as well as the challenges these dimensions pose to its study. Chapter one presents the framework to study the effect of migration and discrimination on Peruvian migrants and presents some background to understanding the roots of the current discrimination against Peruvians in Chile.
Chapter two draws theoretical approaches and concepts from medical anthropology so as to frame an understanding of displacement and its effects on the individual. It starts with a brief chronological trajectory of the re- conceptualisation of illness in medical anthropology. Its objective is to place illness within the understanding of the interpretative approach. The theoretical approaches of Political Economy, the critical approach in Medical Anthropology and Social Suffering are also included with the purpose of building a middle ground approach. The middle ground approach allows delving into a micro-level of analysis, without losing perspective on social forces which determine individual experiences. The discussion focuses then on some of the cultural dynamics associated with migration. It debates the effects of displacement on individual bodies and subjectivities. It also explores idioms of distress as a means to communicate and represent personal and collective suffering.
Chapter three is devoted to the methodology used in this study. It describes the process of doing ethnography and participant observation and the different roles that I adopted in the field as, volunteer, researcher and lastly as migrants’
neighbour. It discusses the scopes and limits of the information gathered throughout each one of these roles and the process of gradual engagement with the community studied. It further addresses the different facets involved in doing participant observation – entering into the field, building a relation of complicity and trust with the community. It discusses my own subjectivity
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and status in the field, as manifested in my interaction with migrants, my personal involvement in community problems and the distance travelled in the process of getting in and out of the field. In doing so the gender dimensions in the fieldwork are also discussed. Other research techniques implemented in order to capture specific dimensions of migrants’ health such as those used to study mental health as well as reproductive health are subsequently explained.
A particular emphasis is given to illness narratives as a central method to capture migrants’ experiences of suffering and emotional distress.
