Structuralizing Culture

Multicultural Neoliberalism, Migration, and Mental Health in Santiago, Chile

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2059331
AutoresGabriel Abarca-Brown (0000-0001-5369-1616, Diego Portales University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen48
Número3
Páginas526-546
Fecha de publicación2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCulture Medicine and Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0165-005X • E-ISSN: 1573-076X
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11013-024-09858-4
PMID38782866
OpenAlexW4398780838
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas46

The arrival of Afro-descendant migrants, mainly from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, has led to the emergence of new discourses on migration, multiculturalism, and mental health in health services in Chile since 2010. In this article, I explore how mental health institutions, experts, and practitioners have taken a cultural turn in working with migrant communities in this new multicultural scenario. Based on a multisited ethnography conducted over 14 months in a neighbourhood of northern Santiago, I focus on the Migrant Program-a primary health care initiative implemented since 2013. I argue that health practitioners have tended to redefine cultural approaches in structural terms focusing mainly on class aspects such poverty, social stratification, and socioeconomic inequalities. I affirm that this structural-based approach finds its historical roots in a political and ideological context that provided the conditions for the development of community psychiatry experiences during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as in multicultural and gender policies promoted by the state since the 1990s. This case reveals how health institutions and practitioners have recently engaged in debates on migration and intersectionality from a structural approach in Chile

Mental health · Multiculturalism · Neoliberalism (international relations · Pedagogy · Political science · Psychiatry · Public health · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Competency in Health Care · Gender Studies · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Medicine · Migration, Health and Trauma · Nursing · Psychology