Health Patterning of Im/migrant and Asylum-Seeking Emerging Adults from Guatemala and Honduras

Abstract

Background: Over the past decade, increasing numbers of emerging adults, defined as ages 18 to 22, have journeyed to the United States (US) from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Upon arrival to the US, many experience inequities in health and healthcare access. The inequities are shaped by US political practices and choices attributed to broad structural and systemic-level barriers within planetary, social, economic and necropolitical forces. Applying a critical framework of antiracism, anti-oppression and anticolonialism, nurses and other healthcare providers must seek to understand the health patterning and life experiences of emerging adult im/migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador so that their health and healthcare needs may be supported. Approach: This qualitative research project aimed to explore health patterning of emerging adult immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador using the nursing specific research praxis of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC). The second aim explored themes across the group. Critical posthuman, feminist, and new materialist assumptions also informed the approach to the study. Between June 2021 to November 2022 thirteen emerging adult participants from Guatemala and Honduras were interviewed twice. Enrollment occurred through community-based recruitment and snowball sampling methods. Each person’s individual story was explored using the HEC praxis method. Results: Participants’ stories uncovered unique profiles with situated, context-specific individual health patterning. Four themes were identified across stories using the qualitative analytic method of Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Family is Fundamental, The Journey Holds Meaning, Opportunities Exist Amidst Constraints, and Movement and Art are Healing. Conclusions: The discussion section reviews main implications for building critical nursing praxis; understanding intersections of health, nursing care and human mobility; advancing nursing policy for people excluded from care; advancing research using HEC praxis as a caring act of accompaniment; and transforming nursing education for social justice and radical possibility. Im/migration and asylum-seeking were viewed as fundamental human rights including critically advancing the right to health and safety for people in mobility contexts.