This paper presents key research issues on immigrant’s access to healthcare in France. At the national level, recent works underline the presence and persistence of inequalities in health and healthcare access for immigrant populations. However, we know little about the specificities and issues of such questions at the local level. Aiming to fill this gap, the MIGSAN program is based on an interdisciplinary, multi-sited, collective, pooled and shared research methodology. We made a census and mapped key-structures in accessing healthcare (social and medical services) and we conducted ethnographic fieldwork with populations and professionals. We focus on immigrants who live in 3 French regions. We combine two approaches: a spatial approach (how the characteristics of neighborhood can constitute or not a favorable determinant of health and healthcare access?) and a social approach (how the individual and/or collective experience of migration interacts with health, healthcare access, care and consumption). Therefore, the paper presents results relating to different mechanisms and factors that, at the local scale, play a major role in variations in healthcare access for immigrants: (1) experience and practice of health and healing for ageing migrants and (2) changes in familial structures with a focus on pregnant women. This paper ends with a discussion on the modalities of accessing healthcare for immigrant population, combining ideas on the various resources (economic, social and spatial) mobilized by different individuals and groups for they own health, and the ruptures/continuities/negotiations taking place at various stages of life course and in various locations

This paper presents key research issues on immigrant’s access to healthcare in France. At the national level, recent works underline the presence and persistence of inequalities in health and healthcare access for immigrant populations. However, we know little about the specificities and issues of such questions at the local level. Aiming to fill this gap, the MIGSAN program is based on an interdisciplinary, multi-sited, collective, pooled and shared research methodology. We made a census and mapped key-structures in accessing healthcare (social and medical services) and we conducted ethnographic fieldwork with populations and professionals. We focus on immigrants who live in 3 French regions. We combine two approaches: a spatial approach (how the characteristics of neighborhood can constitute or not a favorable determinant of health and healthcare access?) and a social approach (how the individual and/or collective experience of migration interacts with health, healthcare access, care and consumption). Therefore, the paper presents results relating to different mechanisms and factors that, at the local scale, play a major role in variations in healthcare access for immigrants: (1) experience and practice of health and healing for ageing migrants and (2) changes in familial structures with a focus on pregnant women. This paper ends with a discussion on the modalities of accessing healthcare for immigrant population, combining ideas on the various resources (economic, social and spatial) mobilized by different individuals and groups for they own health, and the ruptures/continuities/negotiations taking place at various stages of life course and in various locations