Foreign Bodies: On Health and Migration

During the twentieth century, unprecedented human mobility has raised significant questions regarding migration and health. Whether coerced or voluntary, these migratory flows reverberate through individual bodies, communities, populations, and the body politic in ways that are unexpected and unpredictable. This course will focus on the relationship between health and migration and ask the following questions: 1) how are moving bodies managed, included, or excluded from certain spaces? 2) What is the relationship between the political, economic, juridical, and the medical when analyzing migration? 3) And how does a transnational frame and an emphasis on movement shape local understandings of medicine and health?

The course will proceed in four thematic units, each addressing an aspect of migration and health. The readings are split between US and non-US case studies and will span the twentieth century until the present. Unit 1, Naming and Classifying, will interrogate the categories of “immigrant,” “refugee,” “illegal,” “foreigner” and “citizen” and the role of the law and borders in producing these labels. Unit 2, Labor and Migration, will focus on the relationship between medicine and labor, both skilled and unskilled, to analyze the movement and flow of healthcare practitioners across the world. Unit 3, Migration and Risk, will think through the construction of risky spaces and risky bodies to understand how these labels relate to questions of national security, confinement and surveillance. And Unit 4, Crises and Migration, will examine the conditions that produce health crises such as humanitarian disasters, climate events, and epidemics, and the subsequent responses these elicit intra- and inter-nationally.