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

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.

Far left. Mexican immigrants were depicted as “[t]he type of people who are bringing typhus and other diseases into California from Mexico” by the monthly health bulletin. Source. The California State Board of Health Monthly Bulletin, October 1916.