ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces key themes in this book. It first observes that Mexican government officials commissioning a study in New York on the potential use of a health-care program in Mexico seems strange, but reflects the transnational lives of many Mexican families. It then reviews what Mexican immigrants in New York knew, or did not, about Seguro Popular (SP), and what factors affected that knowledge. The book engages scholarly literature on migration and diaspora by analyzing how Mexico has created diasporic bureaucracies to help their immigrants in the US. It also uses the strategic communication and social marketing literature to propose a framework for future attempts by any government seeking to engage newcomer populations, or get them to enroll in programs. This approach could have helped Mexico in its approach to Mexicans in New York, who largely rejected the official framing of SP as "a social right" that they had a responsibility to claim. They saw hypocrisy in a government that had denied them social rights now exhorting them to claim them in the US. But they liked the program and advised that it be framed as an insurance policy they could enroll in.
