Ep 83 #Immigration Health And The Need For #Change

Community Board PODCAST

Seth M. Holmes, Ph.D., M.D., is Associate Professor and Chair at the University of California, Berkeley in the Division of Society and Environment and the Joint Program in Medical Anthropology. A cultural and medical anthropologist and physician, he has worked on social hierarchies, health inequities, and the ways in which such asymmetries are naturalized, normalized, and resisted in the context of transnational indigenous im/migration, agro-food systems, and health care. He has received national and international awards from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and geography, including the Margaret Mead Award. In addition to scholarly publications, he has written for popular media such as The Huffington Post and Salon.com and spoken on multiple NPR, PRI, Pacifica Radio and Radio Bilingüe radio programs. In his book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, Dr. Holmes details how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine labor rights and health care for workers. The book provides an intimate examination of the everyday lives and suffering of Mexican migrants in our contemporary food system. He questions how social inequalities and suffering come to be perceived as normal and natural in society and in health care, thus leading to and justifying health inequities.