Open AccessBorders, Laborers, and Racialized Medicalization Mexican Immigration and US Public Health Practices in the 20th Century
Author(s) -
Natalia Molina
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2010.300056
Subject(s) - immigration , medicalization , public health , immigration policy , racism , stress (linguistics) , political science , disease , pandemic , inequality , gender studies , medicine , gerontology , sociology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , covid-19 , psychiatry , law , nursing , linguistics , philosophy , pathology , mathematical analysis , mathematics
Throughout the 20th century, US public health and immigration policies intersected with and informed one another in the country's response to Mexican immigration. Three historical episodes illustrate how perceived racial differences influenced disease diagnosis: a 1916 typhus outbreak, the midcentury Bracero Program, and medical deportations that are taking place today. Disease, or just the threat of it, marked Mexicans as foreign, just as much as phenotype, native language, accent, or clothing. A focus on race rendered other factors and structures, such as poor working conditions or structural inequalities in health care, invisible. This attitude had long-term effects on immigration policy, as well as on how Mexicans were received in the United States.