School Employees as Health Care Brokers for Multiply-Marginalized Migrant Families

Abstract

Structural vulnerability illuminates how social positionings shape outcomes for marginalized individuals, like migrant farmworkers, who are often Latino, indigenous, and/or undocumented. Furthering scholarship on negotiating constraints, we explore how school employees (here, Migrant Advocates) broker health care access for migrant farmworker families. Ethnographic research in central Florida showed that Advocates perform similar functions as community health workers while experiencing similar dilemmas. We propose combining medical anthropological insights with the CDC’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child model, conceptualizing schools as an important site for families’ wellbeing, recognizing brokerage roles of staff, and offering new directions for migrant health scholars.