Barriers to Healthcare Access for Immigrants in Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Access to public health has been, is, and will be a necessary right for any person in the world, motivating the proposal of universalist approaches as the best way to provide this service. However, we know that universalism is limited, at best, when it concerns immigrants. In this article, we focus on Costa Rica's and Uruguay's health systems, generally acknowledged as Latin America's most universal, to argue that there are important barriers that limit immigrants' access to public health insurance and health care.

Who cares in Nicaragua? A care regime in an exclusionary social policy context.

In Latin American countries with historically strong social policy regimes (such as those in the Southern Cone), neoliberal policies are usually blamed for the increased burden of female unpaid work. However, studying the Nicaraguan care regime in two clearly defined periods — the Sandinista and the neoliberal eras — suggests that this argument may not hold in the case of countries with highly familialist social policy regimes. Despite major economic, political and policy shifts, the role of female unpaid work, both within the family and in the community, remains persistent and pivotal, and was significant long before the onset of neoliberal policies.