The research that I have been conducting address the complexity of the health/disease/care processes of Bolivian immigrants in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (BAMA) focusing on the sufferings, diseases, pains and ailments – amongst which Tuberculosis stands out as a disease with a growing incidence in this group-, linked to their way of life / work in our society. The path of analysis developed in my works recovers the perspective of the actor inside a relational and process oriented approach that includes, not only the whole set of the social actors, their structure of what is meaningful and of interest, but also considers the asymmetric relationships – in terms of dominance/subordination – and the context in which the subjects are embedded. In this sense, a key starting point is that the inequality and the precarious social and work environment that characterize the way of life of the Bolivian immigrants that work – and in many cases live, together with their children – in clandestine textile workshops of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (BAMA) are, at the same time, a structural process and a life experience in their migratory paths. As such, these processes are embedded in the bodies – they are bodified (Csordas, 1994) – deploying themselves in a variety of ways of social sufferings, as also in ways of interpreting, acting and responding to them. Parting from a historical-structural approach that allows to relate contextual material variables with experiences, perceptions and representations of the actual subjects, I center on the specific field of occupational health, recognizing the living conditions and the characteristics of the work process as fundamental in the wearing down of health, as sources of diseases and as important agents of influence in the morbidity of workers.

--

Bolivian Immigrants,Clandestine Textile Workshops,Buenos Aires