Landscapes of Care

Immigration and Health in Rural America

By Thurka Sangaramoorthy

196 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 12 halftones, 1 map, 1 graph, 1 table

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-7417-9
    Published: June 2023
  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-7416-2
    Published: June 2023
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-7418-6
    Published: April 2023
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-6286-0
    Published: April 2023

Studies in Social Medicine

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Awards & distinctions

Honorable Mention, 2023 SANA Book Prize, Society for the Anthropology of North America

Honorable Mention, 2024 Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section, American Sociological Association

This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a "landscape of care" in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.

About the Author

Thurka Sangaramoorthy is professor of anthropology at American University.
For more information about Thurka Sangaramoorthy, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“[Sangaramoorthy] weaves observations and stories of immigrant workers and their health providers with interdisciplinary literature that makes clear that this treatise has applicability beyond the Eastern shore. . . . Recommended.”—CHOICE

Landscapes of Care is a timely and highly relevant ethnography that is well-suited for courses in medical anthropology, migration, rural studies, and public health. . . . [A] powerful—and much needed—ethnography of rural health and healthcare, and its relevance extends well beyond ‘the land that time forgot.’”—Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Sangaramoorthy offers a glimpse into how and under what conditions migrant workers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and other parts of North America seek, receive, and fashion care. This book provides new ways of reimagining much of the conventional thinking within medical anthropology about immigration and immigrant health."—Adia Benton, Northwestern University

"This is a deftly written book that skillfully brings together multiple strands of analysis through a clear, coherent, and well-theorized set of arguments. Drawing on a rich set of interdisciplinary scholarship, Sangaramoorthy complicates conventional ways of thinking about immigration and rural health in the US."—Jennifer Liu, University of Waterloo