Caring and Carrying the Cost: Bicultural Latina Nurses’ Challenges and Strategies for Working with Coethnic Patients

Abstract

In an emergent type of labor market niche, bicultural immigrants serve as cultural brokers between clients and workers and among different groups of workers whose communications are hindered by cultural and language barriers. We focus on the bicultural Latino nurses who are recruited as cultural brokers to facilitate “culturally competent care” in a predominantly white institution that serves an increasingly diverse patient population, with Hispanics being the majority-minority group. Through a qualitative study based on twenty-six in-depth interviews in Northern California, we find that these nurses adopt “code hybridization” strategies to manage their roles as cultural brokers. We discuss the larger institutional contexts that shape the successes and impacts of these strategies, as well as the theoretical implications for assimilation theories.

Keywords

• nurses
• Latino immigrants
• cultural brokers
• health care
• immigrant assimilation