Doctoral Dissertation Research: International Labor Migration and Health Care Disparities: Eldercare in Genoa, Italy

在Mary K. Anglin博士的指导下，肯塔基大学的博士生Patti Meyer将调查在意大利热那亚老年客户家中工作的南美女性移民护工的医疗保健策略。在全球北方的许多城市，老年人护理是一个严重的问题，这些城市的人口正在老龄化，而家庭规模正在缩小，传统的照顾者女性正在追求家庭以外的工作。移徙工人在家中照顾老人只是当代跨国移徙及其与保健和家庭护理作为可销售商品的增长之间联系的一个例子。研究人员选择热那亚作为合适的地点来调查这一现象，因为热那亚的80岁以上成年人比例在欧洲是最大的。以前的研究集中在移民劳工对其来源国和去向国经济的影响上。这个项目着眼于对护工本身的影响。特别是，研究将解决照顾对照顾者自身身心健康的影响。本研究将利用对护理人员的半结构化访谈、对护理人员提供服务的专业人员的半结构化访谈、长期参与者观察以及意大利移民和劳动力市场的档案数据来：1)产生关于移民护理人员健康问题和医疗资源使用的实证数据；2)调查非正式工作环境中跨国移民的健康问题、生活/工作条件和医疗资源使用之间的关系。这项研究很重要，因为它将以一种新的方式将医学人类学和劳动理论结合起来，这将增加对移民和全球化的个人层面后果的理论理解。这项研究还将为有关照顾老年人和照顾他们的人的政策提供信息。资助这个项目是为了支持社会科学家的教育。

University of Kentucky doctoral student Patti Meyer, supervised by Dr. Mary K. Anglin, will investigate the healthcare strategies of South American female migrant careworkers laboring in the homes of elderly clients in Genoa, Italy. Elder care is an acute concern in many cities across the Global North, where the population is aging while family size is decreasing and women, who are the traditional caregivers, pursue work outside the household. Carework of elders in their homes by migrant workers is but one example of contemporary transnational migration and its linkages with the growth of health and family care as marketable commodities. The researcher has chosen Genoa as an appropriate site to investigate this phenomenon because Genoa has the largest percentage of adults over 80 in Europe.Previous research has focused on the effects of migrant labor on the economies of the countries from which they come and to which they go. This project is looking at the effects on the careworkers themselves. In particular, the research will address the consequences of carework on the careworkers' own mental and physical health. This researcher will use data from semi-structured interviews with careworkers, semi-structured interviews with professionals who provide services to the careworkers, long-term participant observation, and archival data on migrants and labor markets in Italy to: 1) produce empirical data on health concerns of and healthcare resource use by migrant careworkers; and 2) investigate the relationships between health concerns, living/working conditions, and healthcare resource use of transnational migrants in informal work settings.This research is important because it will bring together medical anthropology and labor theory in a new way, which will increase theoretical understanding of the individual-level consequences of migration and globalization. The research also will inform policy regarding the care of elders and those who care for them. Funding this project supports the education of a social scientist.