Discrimination and U.S.-Mexico Migrant Health

Based on five years of research in the field (including berry-picking and traveling with migrants back and forth from Oaxaca, Mexico, up the West Coast of the United States), this presentation explores how international political economic forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and ethnic hierarchies undermine migrant health and health care.  The presentation examines structural and symbolic violence, medicalization, and the clinical gaze as they affect the experiences and perceptions of a vertical slice of indigenous Mexican migrant farmworkers in the U.S. and health professionals in the field of migrant health. Seth Holmes analyses the ways in which socially structured illness comes to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, especially through imputations of ethnic body difference.

Seth Holmes is an Associate Professor in medical anthropology and public health at the University of California, Berkeley.

This event is part of the joint lecture series "Global Health and the Politics of Knowledge". It is organized by the WZB Junior Research Groups “Global Humanitarian Medicine” and “Governance for Global Health”.

The event will be held in English with no translation into German.