Migrants, Minorities & Health : Historical and Contemporary Studies

Looking at a number of migrant and minority groups from around the world, this book examines how health issues and the construction of medical ideas have interacted with developing ideas of ethnicity and race.

How has twentieth-century medicine dealt with immigrants and minorities? The contributors to Migrants, Minorities and Health have studied a number of different types of migrant and minority groups from different societies around the world in order to examine the complex relations between health issues and ideas of ethnicity and race. The collection explores the historical origins and the contemporary power of stereotypical views—of immigrants as importers of disease, for instance, or of minorities as a source of infection in the host society. The authors show how ideas of ethnicity and race have shaped, and in turn have been influenced by, the construction of medical ideas. Challenging our common assumptions about migrants, minorities and health, this collection brings together new perspectives from a variety of disciplines. It will make fascinating reading for social historians, medical historians and social policy makers.