Social support for immigrant women of Valparaíso, Chile.

Abstract

Social support is a resource for the quality of life of immigrant women and constitutes social capital. The objective was to identify the frequency and satisfaction of the social support perceived and received by immigrant women from the Valparaíso Health Centers. Study with a non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive design, using a social survey. The Perceived and Received Social Support Questionnaire and sociodemographic questions were applied to 227 women between 18 and 44 years old. Descriptive statistics, Pearson's R tests and analysis of variance were used. The results suggested that the country of origin, marital status, education, years in Chile, reasons for migration, housing, number of people residing in the dwelling, work, immigration status and diagnosis of diseases are related to frequency and satisfaction of perceived and received social support. Informational, material or emotional social support from immigrant networks contributes to their integration into the host society.