Bordered Resistance: Immigrant Health Justice and Medical Humanitarianism in the Zones of Exception

Erin Hoekstra, Marquette University

Immigrant ineligibility for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has exacerbated an “ordinary crisis” of immigrant health. Lacking access to insurance coverage and health care provision, immigrants remain the largest population of uninsured people in the U.S. In response to this crisis, the Immigrant Health Justice Movement provides limited medical care through free charity clinics, nonprofit and humanitarian organizations, and even MASH-like medical units in the desert. In a social and political landscape that makes immigrant health provision challenging, this loose configuration of organizations and activists has mobilized against punitive immigration policy and enforcement, the criminalization of immigrants, and their lack of rights and access to social services, particularly health care. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with two humanitarian organizations providing medical care to uninsured migrants in Arizona, this paper analyzes the discursive strategies that these organizations use to frame their politically-contentious work. Central to my argument is an analysis of the spatialization of immigrant criminalization in reference to the border – in particular, the socio-political implications of “zones of exception.” These spatial zones of exception radically shape the everyday operations of these movement organizations and activists, including the work they do, who they support, and the discourses they employ to legitimate their strategies and tactics. Depending on their location within these zones, these medical humanitarian organizations deploy different mobilizations and discourses of “health.” My paper argues for the importance of spatialization for understanding the immigrant health crisis and the response and framing of medical humanitarianism.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 65. Health, Law and Technology