Sarah Horton - University of Colorado Denver

Sarah Horton - University of Colorado Denver
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Sarah Horton
University of Colorado Denver
Anthropology
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Department of Anthropology
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
University of Colorado Denver
Campus Box 103 P.O. Box 173364
Denver, CO 80217-3364
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Books by Sarah Horton
"They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields:" Illness, Injury, and "Illegality" among U.S. Farmworkers
They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields takes the reader on an ethnographic tour of the melon and ...
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They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields takes the reader on an ethnographic tour of the melon and corn harvesting fields in California’s Central Valley to understand why farmworkers suffer heatstroke at a rate higher than workers in any other industry. Although state officials and the media tend to portray the disproportionate number of heat deaths among farmworkers as a matter mostly of rising temperatures, Horton shows that labor, immigration, health care, disability, and industry food safety policies place Latino migrant farmworkers in harm’s way. Laden with captivating detail of farmworkers’ daily work and home lives, this book examines how U.S. immigration policy and the historic exclusion of farmworkers from the promises of liberalism has forced migrant farmworkers to be what Horton calls “exceptional workers.” She explores the deeply intertwined political, legal, and social factors that place Latino migrants at particular risk of illness and injury in the fields, as well as the patchwork of health care, disability, and Social Security policies that provide them little succor when they become sick or grow old. By following the lives of a core group of farmworkers over nearly a decade, Horton provides a searing portrait of how their precarious immigration and work statuses get under their skin, culminating in preventable morbidity and premature death.
The Santa Fe Fiesta, Re-Invented: Staking Ethno-Nationalist Claims to a Disappearing Homeland
Refereed Journals by Sarah Horton
From " Deportability " to " Denounce-ability: " New Forms of Labor Subordination in an Era of Governing Immigration Through Crime
The highly publicized 2008 Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raid in Postville, Io...
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The highly publicized 2008 Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raid in Postville, Iowa, signaled a new strategy in interior immigration enforcement. Rather than merely deport the unauthorized workers it apprehended, ICE arrested them on charges of working under stolen documents (aggravated identity theft) and invented Social Security numbers (Social Security fraud) and imprisoned them prior to their deportation. Drawing on interviews with forty-five migrant farmworkers and six labor supervisors in a migrant farmworking community in California's Central Valley, this article explores how unauthorized migrants obtain the work documents they must provide to labor supervisors in order to work. This article shows that the poverty and marginalization of migrant communities has led to the mutually beneficial exchange of work authorization documents between donors with legal status and recipients without legal status. Using ethnography to recontextualize these document loans, this article offers an alternative interpretation of the criminal charges levied in Postville. Because voluntary document exchanges may be misrepresented as involuntary theft, labor supervisors use their knowledge of identity loan to suppress identity recipients' workers' compensation claims. This article examines the effect of the criminalization of immigration on labor discipline, suggests that migrant " denounce-ability " has joined migrant " deportability " as a powerful new tool of labor subordination. [illegality, deportability, identity theft, employer sanctions, criminalization of immigration]
Ghost Workers: The Implications of Governing Immigration Through Crime for Migrant Workplaces
Based on interviews and fieldwork in a migrant farmworking community in California's Central Vall...
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Based on interviews and fieldwork in a migrant farmworking community in California's Central Valley, this article examines the phenomenon of " identity masking " and its implications for workers' labor conditions. It shows that labor supervisors often take advantage of unauthorized migrants' and minors' legal ineligibility for employment by making their employment contingent upon working a set of loaned identity documents. In doing so, employers render these groups " ghost workers " —that is, they simultaneously obscure their presence from the state and federal governments while benefitting from the wage deductions associated with such prohibited workers' labor. By calling attention to on-the-ground practices of document circulation, this article thus critiques the charges of " identity theft " often levied against unauthorized migrants during worksite raids. Yet the common practice of " identity masking " not only directly benefits supervisors as individuals, but also makes injured " ghost workers " disappear. As employers wield the threat of implicating such workers in " identity theft " to suppress their workers' compensation claims, this article illustrates the implications of the trend towards " governing immigration through crime " (Dowling and Inda 2013) on the migrant labor force.
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Criminal justice increasingly governs immigration, portraying unauthorized migrants as 'criminals' to justify legal actions against them.
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Identity Loan: The Moral Economy of Migrant Document Exchange in California's Central Valley
"Identity loan" is common among U.S. farmworkers. In contrast to “identity theft,” it is a volunt...
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"Identity loan" is common among U.S. farmworkers. In contrast to “identity theft,” it is a voluntary exchange in which citizens and legal permanent residents lend unauthorized migrants their identity documents so that the latter may obtain a job.
Drawing on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with 45 migrant farmworkers in California’s Central Valley, I show that federal and state policies have encouraged identity loan as a mode of reciprocal gift-giving in resource- and
document-poor migrant communities. Document exchange benefits “identity donors” by increasing their unemployment payments and directly depositing deductions from unauthorized migrants’ wages into their Social Security accounts. While many scholars theorize that unauthorized status serves as a hidden subsidy for the state, this study
illuminates the microprocesses through which ordinary citizens and residents agentively vie to divert this “profit reserve” into their own pockets.
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Identity loan is the most common method for migrant farmworkers to obtain work permits, reflecting the dire economic conditions in which they operate.
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A Critical Medical Anthropological Approach to the US' Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010-the U.S.'s first major health care reform in over half a ce...
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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010-the U.S.'s first major health care reform in over half a century-has sparked new debates in the United States about individual responsibility, the collective good, and the social contract. Although the ACA aims to reduce the number of the uninsured through the simultaneous expansion of the private insurance industry and government-funded Medicaid, critics charge it merely expands rather than reforms the existing fragmented and costly employer-based health care system. Focusing in particular on the ACA's individual mandate and its planned Medicaid expansion, this statement charts a course for ethnographic contributions to the on-the-ground impact of the ACA while showcasing ways critical medical anthropologists can join the debate. We conclude with ways that anthropologists may use critiques of the ACA as a platform from which to denaturalize assumptions of "cost" and "profit" that underpin the global spread of market-based medicine more broadly. [Affordable Care Act, critical medical anthropology, health insurance, neoliberalism, Medicaid]
Medical Returns as Class Transformation: Situating Migrants' Medical Returns within a Framework of Transnationalism
Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness
, Nov 2012
Because studies of migrants’ ‘medical returns’ have been largely confined to the field of public ...
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Because studies of migrants’ ‘medical returns’ have been largely confined to the field of public health, such forms of return migration are rarely contextualized within the rich social scientific literature on transnational migration. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with Mexican migrants in an immigrant enclave in central California, I show that migrants’ reasons for returning to their hometowns for care must be understood within the class disjunctures facilitated by migration. While migrants’ Medicaid insurance confined them to public clinics and hospitals in the US, their migrant dollars enabled them to visit private doctors and clinics in Mexico. Yet medical returns were not mere medical arbitrage, but also allowed migrants to access care that had previously been foreclosed to them as poor peasants in Mexico. Thus crossing the border enabled a dual class transformation, as Mexican migrants transitioned from Medicaid recipients to cash-paying patients, and from poor rural peasants to ‘returning royalty’.Accepted Author Version. Not yet edited or proofed. Please see disclaimer on the article abstract page.
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Despite MediCal coverage, both Rogelio and Alicia sought treatments in Mexico due to limitations and inadequacies in US health care.
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Reasons for Self-Medication and Perceptions of Risk among Mexican American Farmworkers.
Journal of Immigrant Health. 14(4):664-72.
, 2012
Although the frequency of self-medication among Mexican migrants has been well-documented in the ...
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Although the frequency of self-medication among Mexican migrants has been well-documented in the public health literature, the multiple reasons for this practice are poorly understood. Most studies point to migrants' cultural preferences for Mexican medications, their prior experiences in countries where antibiotics are loosely regulated, and their lack of access to health care as the primary factors behind their self-medication. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with 23 Mexican migrants in a farm working community in the interior of California, we argue that occupational vulnerability is an equally important factor that encourages selfmedication. All 23 of our interviewees reported having engaged in some degree of self-medication, notable in this location 8 h from the US-Mexico border. Among interviewees, occupational vulnerability represented an even more important factor influencing self-medication than lack of health insurance or lack of legal documentation. While interviewees did express a preference for Mexican medications as more potent and effective, this did not necessarily translate to a preference for using them without a doctor's supervision. Finally, we show that rather than remaining unaware of the risks of following this custom ''transported from Latin America'', Mexican migrants devised an elaborate hierarchy of resort of the safest selfmedication practices to follow.
Everything I Thought They Were, They Weren’t: Family Systems as Support and Impediment to Recovery
Social Science & Medicine 73(8):1222-1229.
, 2011
Medical Returns: Seeking Health Care in Mexico
Social Science & Medicine 72(11): 1846-1852.
, 2011
A Latino Oral Health Paradox? Using Ethnography to Specify the Factors that Contribute to Immigrant Children’s Poorer Oral Health
National Association of Practicing Anthropologists Bulletin 34(1):68-83.
, 2010
Mexico than their U.S.-born children. Yet little research has explored the specific environmental...
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Mexico than their U.S.-born children. Yet little research has explored the specific environmental, social, and cultural factors that mediate the much-discussed "Latino health paradox," in which foreign-born Latinos paradoxically enjoy better health status than their children, U.S.-born Latinos, and whites. Through ethnography, we explore the dietary and environmental factors that ameliorated immigrant parents' oral health status in rural Mexico, while ill preparing them for the more cariogenic diets and environments their children face in the United States. We argue that studies on the "Latino health paradox" neglect a binational analysis, ignoring the different health status of Latino populations in their sending countries.
Stigmatized Biologies: Examining the Cumulative Effects of Oral Health Disparities for Mexican American Children
Medical Anthropology Quarterly 24(2): 199-219.
, 2010
This article examines the way that the ECC of Mexican American farmworker children in the United ...
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This article examines the way that the ECC of Mexican American farmworker children in the United States sets them up for lasting dental problems and social stigma as young adults. We examine the role of dietary and environmental factors in contributing to what we call "stigmatized biologies," and that of market-based dental public health insurance systems in cementing their enduring effects. We adapt Margaret Lock's term, local biology, to illustrate the way that biology differs not only because of culture, diet, and environment but also because of disparities in insurance coverage. By showing the long-term effects of ECC and disparate dental treatment on farmworker adults, we show how the interaction of immigrant caregiving practices and underinsurance can having lasting social effects. An examination of the long-term effects of farmworker children's ECC illustrates the ways that market-based health care systems can create embodied differences that in turn reproduce a system of social inequality.
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California's Denti-Cal insurance policies affect children's dental health by limiting treatment options due to low reimbursement rates.
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Stains on Their Self-Discipline: Public Health, Hygiene, and the Disciplining of Undocumented Immigrant Parents in the Nation’s Internal Borderlands
American Ethnologist 36(4): 784-98.
, 2009
Rural Mexican Immigrant Parents’ Interpretation of Children’s Dental Symptoms and Decisions to Seek Treatment
Community Dental Health 26 (4): 216-221.
, 2009
Embodied Inequalities: Oral Health and Social Stigma among Farmworker Young Adults
Revista Palimpsestus 6 (In Spanish).
, 2009
A Mother’s Heart is Weighed Down with Stones: A Phenomenological Approach to the Experience of Transnational Motherhood
Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry. 33(1).
, 2009
Although recent scholarship on transnational mothers has rigorously examined the effect of migrat...
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Although recent scholarship on transnational mothers has rigorously examined the effect of migration on gender constructs and ideologies, it neglects analysis of the lived experience of separated mothers and children. In privileging the exploration of transnational separations through the single analytical lens of gender, such research reduces the embodied distress of mothers and children to mere ''gender false consciousness.'' This paper calls upon anthropologists to redress this oversight by undertaking a phenomenological analysis of the lived experience of transnational motherhood. Eschewing an analysis of mothers and children as isolated social roles, I show that the suffering of mothers and children is profoundly relational. Through analysis of the narratives of undocumented Salvadoran mothers residing in the U.S., I show how the strain of such mothers' undocumented status is lived and shouldered within the intersubjective space of the family.
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The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform Act increased deportations and family separations, exacerbating the challenges faced by immigrant families.
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Consuming Childhood: "Lost" and "Ideal" Childhoods as a Motivation for Migration
Anthropological Quarterly 81(4): 893-912.
, 2008
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Mothers' ideal childhoods were often unattainable due to enforced separations, contradicting their initial migration motivations for their children's futures.
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An Ethnographic Study of Latino Preschool Children’s Oral Health in Rural California: Intersections among Family, Community, Provider and Regulatory Sectors
BMC Oral Health 8(8).
, 2008
Background: Latino children experience a higher prevalence of caries than do children in any othe...
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Background: Latino children experience a higher prevalence of caries than do children in any other racial/ethnic group in the US. This paper examines the intersections among four societal sectors or contexts of care which contribute to oral health disparities for low-income, preschool Latino 1 children in rural California.
Rural Latino Immigrant Parents’ Conceptions of Oral Disease
Journal of Public Health Dentistry 68(1): 22-29.
, 2008
The aim of this study was to examine Latino immigrant caregivers' explanatory models of the cause...
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The aim of this study was to examine Latino immigrant caregivers' explanatory models of the causes of early childhood caries (ECC). Methods: In a rural area, we conducted 71 open-ended qualitative interviews with 26 Mexican immigrant and 12 Salvadoran immigrant caregivers of children under 6 about the causes of ECC. Two researchers independently read each interview and classified each interviewee's response. Results: Caregivers mentioned three biomedical causes of oral disease (sweets, poor oral hygiene, and bottle-feeding) and two lay or popular causes (lack of milk consumption and "bad" genes). Although caregivers were aware that the consumption of sweet foods causes decay, they expressed particular confusion about how bottle-feeding causes decay. Nineteen caregivers attributed decay specifically to bottle-feeding, yet 14 believed the cause of decay was the bottle's nipple. Seven Mexican immigrant caregivers attributed their children's decay specifically to a lack of calcium, and six immigrant caregivers to "bad teeth genes." Conclusions: Conceptions of oral disease derived from the caregivers' own dental experiences, their conceptions of the body, and interactions with dental professionals. The fact that biomedical explanations dominate the list of causes of caries for both groups indicates that the caregivers' explanatory models of oral disease are powerfully shaped by interactions with health professionals. Immigrant caregivers' mistaking of the baby bottle's nipple as the source of decay indicates the need for more effective oral health promotion. Yet the Mexican immigrants' conceptions of a lack of calcium as a major factor in their children's decay may illustrate a strong cultural link between teeth and milk.
Towards an Ethnography of the Uninsured: Gay Becker’s Work in Progress
Medical Anthropology 26 (4): 293-298.
, 2007
was innovative in placing the issue of the uninsured squarely at the heart of her analysis of the...
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was innovative in placing the issue of the uninsured squarely at the heart of her analysis of the U.S. health care system. Becker's novel contribution lay in examining the lack of universal health care in the U.S. as a mode of governance that produced certain subjects-subjects whom the system trained to view themselves as undeserving of care. Interrogating the means by which such a system is normalized, she further showed how a fragmented and discontinuous health care safety net served to contain the problem of the uninsured by discouraging them from seeking necessary treatment.
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The American employment-based insurance model faltered with job market shift, leaving many uninsured without care alternatives.
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