Haitian Immigrants in Rural Maryland: Experiences of Life and Health

Despite expanding populations of immigrants in new receiving communities in the United States, many resources aimed at serving these communities remain underdeveloped and difficult to access. Particularly burdensome for immigrants in rural Maryland are barriers to health care access, as these often overlap with barriers of language and education as well as general attitudes of racism toward and marginalization of Haitian immigrants. In this paper, I employ a qualitative analysis of interview transcripts to identify prominent themes surrounding Haitian individuals’ life experiences on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Interviews were completed by a research team as part of an ongoing ethnography that aims to understand more broadly the experiences of immigrant groups in the area