Community-based healthcare strategies in transnational spaces: Sinaloan migrants living in California

Abstract

This article examines how women from Cosalá, Sinaloa, who maintain transnational links with their husbands or children in the United States, construct hope as a key resource for sustaining these relationships despite the distance. Through in-depth interviews, the women emphasized hope as an essential element in coping with the separation from their relatives. The study focuses on two main objectives: 1) to analyze under what conditions hope can be considered a resource for managing distance in transnational relationships, and 2) to identify the constituent elements of the hope of the interviewed women.

The findings suggest that transnational links function as a "transnational psychosocial space," characterized by strain, violence, and helplessness. Those involved in these relationships often experience learned hopelessness or interpret their optimism as hope, which keeps them trapped in unequal relationships.

This paper analyzes the conditions of vulnerability and risk faced by transnational migrant communities in their search for survival. Specifically, it addresses community-based health care strategies implemented by migrants from Sinaloa, Mexico, with destination communities settled in Southern California, United States. The study includes ethnographic work in the origin and destination locations, including interviews with community physicians, patients and key informants, such as community leaders, medication providers, and other health care-related services, particularly in destination locations where what we have termed an “undocumented transnational health system” operates.