[Health workers' place in studies on international migratory processes and health]

Studies on the health-disease-healthcare process in immigrants settled in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, have revealed a complex web of relations in the demands by immigrants and the actions conceived and planned by health services. In this context, intermediation by health workers in the relationship between immigrants and researchers has constituted an important form of access by the latter to South American immigrants, especially Bolivians. During research, access to immigrants occurs within the context of health actions, facilitating the researchers' access to immigrants' homes, workplaces, and even associations. Understanding the processes of illness in immigrants within the complex web of relations among institutional health workers in organizational spaces shaped by models of thinking based on biomedicine led us to problematize the possibilities for an approach to subjects that comprise this universe.