Low-income working immigrant families in Quebec: Exploring their challenges to well-being

OBJECTIVES: To identify low-income working families’ health challenges and understand their barriers and facilitators to navigating those challenges. METHODS: We conducted a focused ethnographic study in a food bank in Montreal, Quebec. Using purposeful sampling, we recruited participants who had at least one employed family member and one live-in child. Sensitizing concepts included social determinants of health (SDH) and family strengths. Participant observation, focus groups and in-depth interviews constituted the primary means of data collection. Thematic and contextual analyses were conducted iteratively. RESULTS: We recruited 25 participants, 22 clients (15 women and 7 men with up to 5 children per family) and 3 members of staff. All clients were immigrants, having been in Canada for a range of 2 months to 23 years, thus reflecting the ethnic demography of the site. Families described health as physical, mental and socio-cultural well-being. Challenges to well-being included insufficient finances, non-standard work, hurdles in professional equivalency, isolation, children’s acculturation, inadequate access to health care and the Canadian winter. Personal and structural barriers and facilitators to navigating challenges centred on parents’ sense of the challenges being finite, control over discrete dimensions of life and hope of children’s future success. Families who incorporated these perceptions into their narratives seemed to describe the challenges as navigable. Importantly, the SDH model did not anticipate the degree to which challenges would be defined by immigration factors. CONCLUSION: In order to help low-income working immigrant families face diverse challenges to well-being, community workers and policy-makers must consider the specific challenges of immigration and the importance of individual families’ outlooks as they navigate them.