Abstract Based on longitudinal research conducted with 21 Mexican immigrants between 2018 and 2021, this article examines the challenges the COVID‐19 pandemic posed to undocumented immigrants in the United States attempting to provide care for aging parents in Mexico. As the United States excluded undocumented immigrants from pandemic support, the pandemic undermined their ability to provide health care for their parents even as the Mexican public health care system crumbled. Meanwhile, as the pandemic hastened their parents’ demise, it thwarted immigrants’ ability to time returns to see their parents before they died. While scholars have amply documented how spatial disparities exacerbated the impact of the pandemic among marginalized groups, few have examined the temporal disruptions caused by the pandemic. This article suggests that the pandemic provoked particular distress by desynchronizing the temporalities of family life across borders and preventing immigrants’ abilities to coordinate care for their parents in time. [COVID‐19, transnational families, eldercare, death, time]
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Horton, Sarah B. 2021. “Expanding Medicaid to Undocumented Immigrants in Colorado,” participation in virtual roundtable at annual American Anthropological Association conference (Zoom), November 17, 2021.
The COVID pandemic drew attention to longstanding disparities in health care by race and immigration status, prompting states like Oregon, Illinois, and California to provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants with their own funds. This talk examines efforts within Colorado to expand Medicaid to undocumented immigrants and to make Emergency Medicaid more accessible. It explores the challenges that Trumpian policies have posed to these efforts as well as practices of bureaucratic disentitlement in a new receiving area, and concludes with potential counter-strategies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1827339
- PAR ID:
- 10346495
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting (Virtual)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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