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Australia is rapidly becoming home to an increasing number of Polynesians. While the Maori/Pacific Islander 'economic migrant' may appear fit and healthy, statistically the incidence of diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease is extremely high. When this profile is coupled with family reunion migration of older relatives who are living longer, it represents an escalation of current and future outlay for Australian health services. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 67 Polynesian migrants in regard to their perceptions of health and illness, and their experience of health services in Sydney and the Hunter region of New South Wales. Three key respondents, all Polynesian nurses practising in Australia, were also interviewed. The findings indicate a concentration of disadvantage concerning educational achievement, skill levels and health literacy that reinforce the process whereby social disadvantage impacts on health outcomes. This study also reveals a nexus of issues around cultural behaviours and poverty that contribute to the incidence of obesity-related illness and limit compliance with recommended preventative measures and treatments. This paper includes a discussion of the socio-political context of health delivery to Maori and Pacific Islander migrants and how the contraction of services under neoliberal 'belt tightening' undermines potential capacity to treat culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations effectively. As Australian scholarship has traditionally concentrated on Melanesia, there is very little research on Polynesians who are one of our burgeoning migrant groups. This study therefore makes a timely contribution to redressing the lack of literature on Polynesian health, cultural practices and socio-economic positioning in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws upon research involving in-depth interviews with 60 mothers of young children about the home healthcare in which they engage when promoting their children's health and dealing with their illnesses, allergies or developmental problems. The study found that a series of often interconnected discourses were evident in the women's accounts. These included the discourses of health states as controllable, good health as an outcome of good management and the child's body as vulnerable. Other discourses were related to the concept of the 'good mother'. The interviewees also employed the discourses of home healthcare as emotionally distressing and as hard work and of children's illness as a mother's loss of control. As this suggests, such caring was often an intensely embodied and negative emotional experience for the mothers, particularly if they felt as if they had lost control over their children's bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]