@article{ref1,
title="The legal violence of care: navigating the US health care system while undocumented and illegible",
journal="Social science and medicine (1982)",
year="2021",
author="Jimenez, Anthony M.",
volume="270",
number="",
pages="e113676-e113676",
abstract="Medical sociologists widely conceptualize illegality as a social determinant of health, implicating immigration law but not health care law in immigrant health  disparities. Contributing to an emerging literature on legal violence in the context  of health care, I explore how the Harris Health System in Houston, Texas legally  affects low-income undocumented migrants' lives as they seek care. Drawing on eleven  months of ethnographic and interview research with migrants and volunteers at a  community-based organization, I argue that the health care system legally  exacerbates migrant vulnerability in particular ways. Clerical staff follow medical  protocol to deny migrants care on the basis of legibility (i.e., a photo ID), not  legality (i.e., legal status), resulting in two classifications of illegality - what  I term legible and illegible illegality. The former keeps migrants visible to the  state but offers potential care, and the latter legally relegates migrants to the  exploitative conditions of informal home care and/or a protracted state of suffering  where, for many, death is the only recourse. This research shows that without  substantive health reform, health practitioners - physicians, social workers,  clerical staff, and home care workers - play an (in)direct role in shaping and  normalizing immigrant health disparities.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0277-9536",
doi="10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113676"
}