Vulnerable populations in northeastern Mexico face a range of health problems complicated by the inequality and poverty in which they live, especially those suffering from chronic non-communicable diseases, mental illness, or unintentional injuries that lead to dependency and long-term care in old age.
Family caregiving is a common scenario of care provision at practically all income levels and in most social groups; however, for families with fewer resources, it represents an enormous economic and health challenge that promotes, among other things, the deterioration of the patient and the physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion of the primary caregiver.
The impoverishment of households with older adults and their family caregivers highlights the need to explore the impact of illness and dependency on the future of households in terms of long-term care, especially in low-income households that expend a significant amount of time and resources on care.
From an analysis of care, and in the context of dependency and care policies, it will be relevant to distinguish, within the strategies and practices of care, the asymmetries of relationships established in and with institutions, within households, in the community and in the market, as spaces for the provision of public, private, voluntary or familial care.
In this sense, the socio-cultural aspects of the interdependence of care as a domain of negotiation, conflict and conditional return of reciprocity, in which kinship, intergenerationality, gender and life strategies predominate in relation to the resources available to them, will be explored in depth.
