American Journal of Public Health
Volume 101, Issue 6, 2011, Pages 1024-1031

Borders, laborers, and racialized medicalization: Mexican immigration and US public health practices in the 20th century (Article)

Molina N.*
  • a Department of History, Urban Studies Program, University of California, San Diego, United States, Department of History, M/C 0104, 9500 Gilman Dr., San Diego, CA 92093-0104, United States

Abstract

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.

Author Keywords

[No Keywords available]

Index Keywords

social psychology public health service health disparity Health Status Disparities human policy ethnology Mexico United States Humans Public Health Practice Article history History, 20th Century migration legal aspect Prejudice Emigration and Immigration public policy employment

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-79956369953&doi=10.2105%2fAJPH.2010.300056&partnerID=40&md5=0185406408834477c7a1b2bdb673c659

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2010.300056
ISSN: 00900036
Cited by: 14
Original Language: English