Sammendrag
This dissertation is about the extra-medical dimensions of immigrants’ health and health care integration. The inquiry is guided by two core questions: How do immigrants’ cultural norms and values pertaining to family, gender roles, and social organization intertwine with processes of immigrants’ health care integration? How do immigrants negotiate health beliefs, behaviors, and health care-seeking practices upon resettlement? These overlapping questions are explored through on qualitative research among Pakistani and Somali immigrants in Oslo, Norway. The concept of super-diversity underscores that processes of immigrants’ heath care integration increasingly have to be understood not only in light of the continuous diversification of diversity that results from sustained migration over time, but with attention to variations in integration, transnational relations, and culture differences. The four articles comprising the empirical part of the dissertation cover the following topics: The first article explores the link between integration, negotiations of intergenerational reciprocity, and responses to signs and symptoms of cognitive decline among Pakistanis. Article two is about trust, cultural health capital mobilizations, and health care integration among Somali immigrants. The third article takes vantage point in quantitative findings to qualitatively explore the link between migration, gender role negotiations, and mental illness responses among Somalis in diaspora. The fourth article lends a comparative perspective to the bridge-builder role of Pakistani and Somali immigrant organizations in public health matters and processes of immigrants’ health care integration. Building on classical sociological theory, the dissertation contributes to immigrant health research and the social scientific study of migration, processes of diversification, and integration.
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