Motherhood, Ethnicity and Experience: Two Somali Women in Relation to the Finnish Maternity Care

• In Event: 343 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 22. Race, Ethnicity, and Health

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss how ethnicity and cultural background cannot solely explain migrant women's behavior in reltion to the Finnish maternity care. This study departs from the salutogenic theory that defines human beings as resourceful agent. The emphasis lies in trust that resources are available if needed and that they are sufficient to take care of their demands.
I conducted 12 interviews with 11 different women who came from Russia, Somalia, Afganistan and Irak. The interviews were conducted between May and November 2012, with interpreters. My criteria for selecting informants were that they are 1) refugee women who have been granted a residence permit in Finland, 2) who have lived at least two years in Finland, and 3) who currently take care of their child(ren) at home. In this paper I present two in-depth analyses on two Somali women. Nadina was open minded and responded with trust to offered professional care. Sayda was discontented with lacking interpretation service, which she had reason to be however, her sense of bitterness may had lied in difficulties to develop trust in professionals. Thus even when Nadina and Sayda belonged to the same ethnic group they had different abilities to identify resources in their local surroundings.

Author

• Annika Linnea Lillrank, University of Helsinki