H Castaneda
Biographic Data
| ID | 11218 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H Castaneda |
| GIVEN NAMES | H |
| FAMILY NAME | Castaneda |
| SIGNATURE | CASTANEDA H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Florida |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5892-3279 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 652 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Role of Informal Support Networks in Immigrant Young Adults’ Navigation of Mental Healthcare Services
Prior studies reveal that both structural (e.g., legal status, lack of health insurance, and cost) and sociocultural (e.g., religious beliefs and stigma) barriers prevent immigrants from utilizing formal healthcare services. This problem is exacerbated for immigrants with temporary legal statuses. Less is known about how they navigate barriers to receiving care for mental health needs and how they cope with these barriers. One form of temporary s…
Do I really need to check that box?' Ethnoracial ambiguity among Indigenous North Africans in the United States
This article examines the experiences of Amazigh people (plural: Imazighen) and how they negotiate ethnoracial hierarchies in the United States. Imazighen are Indigenous peoples from North Africa; upon arrival to the U.S., they are confronted with ethnoracial categories into which they don’t fit neatly, particularly due to their Indigenous status. Drawing on interviews with 75 Imazighen, we explore how they navigate ethnoracial identity through f…
The Hotel of 10,000 Stars”
Objectives. To identify appropriate interventions to prevent injury, we conducted a qualitative study among commercial shrimp fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. Methods. Using qualitative and participatory research methods, including interviews, photovoice, and workplace observations in southeast Texas and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, we examined the social‒structural dimensions that contribute to physical and psychological injury. Results. We f…
Normalized Expendability
Using longitudinal qualitative data, we examine how undocumented immigrants in Florida navigated the first year of the COVID pandemic. Building on the concepts of compounded vulnerability and legal violence, we demonstrate how heightened exposure to COVID shaped immigrants' well-being by virtue of being overrepresented among frontline workers, underserved by the healthcare industry, and excluded from government pandemic aid. We demonstrate how im…
Spaces and challenges of citizenship
This commentary engages the articles in the "Citizenship, Solidarity, and Nonbelonging" forum by discussing three points: citizen participation in and challenges to bureaucratic practices; the spatialities of citizenship and belonging; and the potentials for co-optation of civic mobilization vis-à-vis the privatization of state responsibilities. It concludes that citizen mobilizations can effectively structure the terms of the debate and create n…
The Lingering Ache
Recent scholarship theorizes temporalities as an important part of the migration experience, with temporal insecurity being a crucial element of (im)mobility and inequality via the phenomenon of waiting. In this article, we examine how temporalities and experiences of waiting influence health status and access to care, using ethnographic data to articulate how temporalities impact resources and how a doxa of waiting is enacted, placing some group…
Undocumented Again? Daca Rescission, Emotions, and Incorporation Outcomes among Young Adults
Former President Trump’s election and subsequent anti-immigrant policy initiatives brought an unprecedented sense of uncertainty for undocumented immigrants. This is particularly true for those who had experienced expanding opportunities through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive action signed by former President Obama in 2012. We use in-depth interviews with undocumented young adults to explore how the 2016 presidential …
A lot of people there were undocumented, or at least looked like me”
Contemporary migration studies in cultural geography emphasize place-based approaches, recognizing the relational and contextual nature of belonging, especially as these are nested within material and symbolic structures of racial inequality. This article highlights the role of precarious legal status, focusing on undocumented immigrant young adults who grew up in the United States, to examine subjective experiences of place-making and belonging …
The mixed-status community as analytic framework to understand the impacts of immigration enforcement on health
Legal and Ethnoracial Consciousness
Prior work has focused on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of immigrants and in the construction of social illegality. In this article, we examine how the undocumented 1.5 immigrant generation perceive, consume, and navigate media messaging about immigration-and particularly Latino immigrants-to understand the role of media in shaping their lived experiences. We analyze 50 in-depth and nine follow-up interviews with undocumented yo…
Deservingness
This article brings the social science concept of ‘deservingness’ to bear on clinical cases of transnational migrant patients. Based on the authors’ medical social science research, health delivery practice and clinical work from multiple locations in Africa. Europe and the Americas, the article describes three clinical cases in which assumptions of deservingness have significant implications for the morbidity and mortality of migrant patients. T…
Familial Vulnerability
Mental and emotional well-being are intimately entangled with immigration status, personal relationships, and the broader political environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Texas including interviews with mixed-status families, this article illustrates the spillover impacts affecting mental and emotional health of family members with different legal statuses. Building on the notion of "structural vulnerability," we propose the conc…
Shifting Roles in Families of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) Recipients and Implications for the Transition to Adulthood
The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enabled undocumented immigrant young adults to more freely participate in U.S. society. Guided by family systems theory, which emphasizes that individual actors are interdependent with others within family units, we analyze the experiences of young adult DACA recipients while members of their families remain deportable. We draw from 44 in-depth interviews with DACA recipients who are …
Nonimmigrant Others
Micronesians from nations in the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with the United States can enter the country visa-free as 'nonimmigrants.' This status creates a perpetual state of precarity; they are never considered legal 'immigrants' nor are they on any path to permanent US resident status. Rather than illegalization and bordering practices, precarious status is the result of territorial arrangements, ongoing imperial interactions, and sec…
Borders of Belonging
Borders of Belonging investigates a pressing but previously unexplored aspect of immigration in America—the impact of immigration policies and practices not only on undocumented migrants, but also on their family members, some of whom possess a form of legal status. Heide Castañeda reveals the trauma, distress, and inequalities that occur daily, alongside the stratification of particular family members' access to resources like education, employm…
Addressing Health Disparities in the Rural United States
Rural populations in the United States are faced with a variety of health disparities that complicate access to care. Community health workers (CHWs) and their Spanish-speaking counterparts, promotores de salud , are well-equipped to address rural health access issues, provide education, and ultimately assuage these disparities. In this article, we compare community health workers in the states of Indiana and Texas, based on the results of two se…
Geographies of Confinement for Immigrant Youth
The containment of immigrants along the US/Mexico border illuminates the complex spatial implications associated with the securitization of migration enforcement. The production of marginalized, carceral national spaces has particular consequences for the people who inhabit them, as processes of spatial illegality shape their daily lives. Our analyses draw on five years of ethnographic study in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Here, we focus on th…
Recognize Our Humanity
The "DACAmented Voices in Healthcare" project examined the intersection of restrictive immigration policies and health care via photovoice, a participatory action research approach, with immigrant youth living in Arizona, who were recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. These "DACAmented" youth took part in nine photovoice sessions exploring their health care experiences and accessibility to care using documentary…
School Employees as Health Care Brokers for Multiply-Marginalized Migrant Families
Structural vulnerability illuminates how social positionings shape outcomes for marginalized individuals, like migrant farmworkers, who are often Latino, indigenous, and/or undocumented. Furthering scholarship on negotiating constraints, we explore how school employees (here, Migrant Advocates) broker health care access for migrant farmworker families. Ethnographic research in central Florida showed that Advocates perform similar functions as com…
A Risky Place? Media and the Health Landscape in the (In)secure U.S.‐Mexico Borderlands
In this paper, we consider how news stories about one area of the U.S.‐Mexico borderlands, the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, further propagate notions of a region filled with people characterized as dangerously noncompliant with American ideals of citizenship, prosperity, and security. Using Ethnographic Content Analysis, we conducted a systematic analysis of Valley, state and national mainstream news media stories from 2010–2016 about health…
Is coverage enough? Persistent health disparities in marginalised Latino border communities
What has been the fate of those living in the place once dubbed the ‘county that needs the Affordable Care Act the most’? This article presents results from a longitudinal, five-year ethnographic study of healthcare access in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It explores reasons why this region along the U.S./Mexico border has the highest rate of uninsured persons in the country and remains among the most medically underserved, despite some increas…
Migration is part of the human experience but is far from natural
Shifting Discourses and Social Relations
Commentaries on Migration and Borders from the United States
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William L. Alexander, Anthony Guevara, Mary K. Brannock, Xóchitl Bada, Andreas Feldmann, Beth F. Baker, Deborah A. Boehm, Guillermo Cantor, Heide Castañeda, Jeffrey H. Cohen, Walter A. Ewing, Christina Getrich, David Griffith, Lourdes Gu…
Intimate Migrations
Representing the "European refugee crisis" in Germany and beyond
The European refugee crisis has gained worldwide attention with daily media coverage both in and outside Germany. Representations of refugees in media and political discourse in relation to Germany participate in a Gramscian "war of position" over symbols, policies, and, ultimately, social and material resources, with potentially fatal consequences. These representations shift blame from historical, political-economic structures to the displaced …
Illegality as risk factor
Special Issue Discourses of Displacement and Deservingness
Im/Migration and Health
This article provides an overview of some of the major topical areas in the study of im/migrant health relevant for applied and practicing anthropologists. It illustrates the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical insights they have contributed to the discipline as a whole. Topics include the intersection of health care and immigration policy; access to services; charity care and free clinics; cultural competency; medical pluralism; reproduc…
Paternity for Sale
Women's experiences of migration, and their relationship to a host country, vary significantly from those of migrant men simply because pregnancy is a possibility. The concept of "demographic theft" highlights popular anxieties regarding high fertility among foreigners, including undocumented migrants. This article examines pregnant undocumented women's experiences with the health care system and relationship to the state in Germany. It also prov…
Health Care Access for Latino Mixed-Status Families
There are approximately 2.3 million mixed-status families in the United States, containing varied combinations of citizens, permanent legal residents, undocumented immigrants, and individuals in legal limbo. These families offer an opportunity to examine the functioning of the contemporary state and its penetration at the household level. For many Latino youth, experiences are framed not only by their own but other family members' legal status. T…
Take a Stand Commentary
Of the estimated 214 million people who have migrated from poorer to richer countries in search of a better life, between 20 and 30 million have migrated on an unauthorized, or “illegal,” basis. All have health needs, or will in the future, yet most are denied health care available to citizens and authorized residents. To many, unauthorized im/migrants’ exclusion intuitively “makes sense.” As scholars of health, social justice, and human rights, …
Medical aid as protest
This article examines organized efforts by citizens to provide medical aid to unauthorized migrants in Germany. A case study of an activist organization in Berlin highlights how prevailing forms of governance through citizenship are disrupted. Three major themes are explored. First, historical contingencies and policy realities explain why, given examples of grassroots protest by migrants in other settings, efforts in Germany have been driven pri…
Geographies of Confinement for Immigrant Youth
The containment of immigrants along the US/Mexico border illuminates the complex spatial implications associated with the securitization of migration enforcement. The production of marginalized, carceral national spaces has particular consequences for the people who inhabit them, as processes of spatial illegality shape their daily lives. Our analyses draw on five years of ethnographic study in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Here, we focus on th…
Familial Vulnerability
Mental and emotional well-being are intimately entangled with immigration status, personal relationships, and the broader political environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Texas including interviews with mixed-status families, this article illustrates the spillover impacts affecting mental and emotional health of family members with different legal statuses. Building on the notion of "structural vulnerability," we propose the conc…
The mixed-status community as analytic framework to understand the impacts of immigration enforcement on health
European Mobilities or Poverty Migration? Discourses on Roma in Germany
This article discusses the discursive framing of displacement and legitimacy for Roma migrants living in Germany to explore distinctions between “economic” and “forced” migration. Despite efforts towards their inclusion at the EU level, there has been an escalation in anti‐Roma sentiment across Europe simultaneous with increased transnational mobility. Based on media analysis and ethnographic research spanning 2011 to 2013, the inconsistencies an…
False hope
Structural vulnerability and access to medical care among migrant street-based male sex workers in Germany
Do Notions of Risk Inform Patient Choice? Lessons from a Study of Prenatal Genetic Counseling
Risk modeling is an increasingly important part of clinical medicine; however, "risk status" is a complex notion, understood differently by patients and clinicians. Patients' ability to make informed choices about clinical procedures often requires that they interpret risk statistics, which may be difficult to understand and apply. In this article, which is based on a study of prenatal care in South Texas, we consider how notions of risk affect p…
Shifting Roles in Families of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) Recipients and Implications for the Transition to Adulthood
The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enabled undocumented immigrant young adults to more freely participate in U.S. society. Guided by family systems theory, which emphasizes that individual actors are interdependent with others within family units, we analyze the experiences of young adult DACA recipients while members of their families remain deportable. We draw from 44 in-depth interviews with DACA recipients who are …
Recognize Our Humanity
The "DACAmented Voices in Healthcare" project examined the intersection of restrictive immigration policies and health care via photovoice, a participatory action research approach, with immigrant youth living in Arizona, who were recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. These "DACAmented" youth took part in nine photovoice sessions exploring their health care experiences and accessibility to care using documentary…
Diversity Dilemmas and Opportunities
Legal and Ethnoracial Consciousness
Prior work has focused on the role of media in shaping public perceptions of immigrants and in the construction of social illegality. In this article, we examine how the undocumented 1.5 immigrant generation perceive, consume, and navigate media messaging about immigration-and particularly Latino immigrants-to understand the role of media in shaping their lived experiences. We analyze 50 in-depth and nine follow-up interviews with undocumented yo…
Nonimmigrant Others
Micronesians from nations in the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with the United States can enter the country visa-free as 'nonimmigrants.' This status creates a perpetual state of precarity; they are never considered legal 'immigrants' nor are they on any path to permanent US resident status. Rather than illegalization and bordering practices, precarious status is the result of territorial arrangements, ongoing imperial interactions, and sec…
Is coverage enough? Persistent health disparities in marginalised Latino border communities
What has been the fate of those living in the place once dubbed the ‘county that needs the Affordable Care Act the most’? This article presents results from a longitudinal, five-year ethnographic study of healthcare access in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It explores reasons why this region along the U.S./Mexico border has the highest rate of uninsured persons in the country and remains among the most medically underserved, despite some increas…
HPV Awareness Among Latina Immigrants and Anglo-american Women in the Southern United States
Latinas have higher cervical cancer age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates, and present with more advanced disease compared to non-Latino whites. This study used a cross-sectional mixed methods survey design, exploring knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs regarding the human papillomavirus (HPV), the HPV vaccine, and cervical cancer screening with four groups of women (Mexican, Honduran, Puerto Rican, Anglo-American; n= 80) attending low-income …
School Employees as Health Care Brokers for Multiply-Marginalized Migrant Families
Structural vulnerability illuminates how social positionings shape outcomes for marginalized individuals, like migrant farmworkers, who are often Latino, indigenous, and/or undocumented. Furthering scholarship on negotiating constraints, we explore how school employees (here, Migrant Advocates) broker health care access for migrant farmworker families. Ethnographic research in central Florida showed that Advocates perform similar functions as com…
Effects of Transitional Measures Associated with EU Integration on Medical Care Access for Central and Eastern European Migrants in Germany
This article examines the unintended effects of policy on the cross-border health care experiences of persons from the new Central and Eastern European (CEE) states of the European Union (EU) during a time of major transition. While permitted to travel freely, most individuals from the new member states are not yet authorised to work in Germany. As a result, they face many everyday forms of exclusion, including lack of access to medical services.…
Reevaluating Political Constructs of Ecology and Sustainability
Do Notions of Risk Inform Patient Choice? Lessons from a Study of Prenatal Genetic Counseling
Risk modeling is an increasingly important part of clinical medicine; however, "risk status" is a complex notion, understood differently by patients and clinicians. Patients' ability to make informed choices about clinical procedures often requires that they interpret risk statistics, which may be difficult to understand and apply. In this article, which is based on a study of prenatal care in South Texas, we consider how notions of risk affect p…
Paternity for Sale
Women's experiences of migration, and their relationship to a host country, vary significantly from those of migrant men simply because pregnancy is a possibility. The concept of "demographic theft" highlights popular anxieties regarding high fertility among foreigners, including undocumented migrants. This article examines pregnant undocumented women's experiences with the health care system and relationship to the state in Germany. It also prov…
Illegality as risk factor
HPV Awareness Among Latina Immigrants and Anglo-american Women in the Southern United States
Latinas have higher cervical cancer age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates, and present with more advanced disease compared to non-Latino whites. This study used a cross-sectional mixed methods survey design, exploring knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs regarding the human papillomavirus (HPV), the HPV vaccine, and cervical cancer screening with four groups of women (Mexican, Honduran, Puerto Rican, Anglo-American; n= 80) attending low-income …
Im/Migration and Health
This article provides an overview of some of the major topical areas in the study of im/migrant health relevant for applied and practicing anthropologists. It illustrates the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical insights they have contributed to the discipline as a whole. Topics include the intersection of health care and immigration policy; access to services; charity care and free clinics; cultural competency; medical pluralism; reproduc…
False hope
Medical Humanitarianism and Physicians' Organized Efforts to Provide Aid to Unauthorized Migrants in Germany
Universal notions of a right to health for unauthorized migrants operate together with incongruous state and international policies. These ambivalent policies demand ethnographic attention, since they have resulted in a two-tiered system in host countries and foster short-term, improvisational remedies. Medical care for unauthorized migrants is typically left in the hands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and permitted under the guise of s…
Assessing the 2010 Affordable Care Act
In March of 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (known together as the Affordable Care Act or ACA). The largest legislative overhaul of the US health care system since the expansion of the Social Security Act in the 1960s, it invoked a fierce national debate about the elements required for reform. Many of the ACA's provisions do not take effect u…
Effects of Transitional Measures Associated with EU Integration on Medical Care Access for Central and Eastern European Migrants in Germany
This article examines the unintended effects of policy on the cross-border health care experiences of persons from the new Central and Eastern European (CEE) states of the European Union (EU) during a time of major transition. While permitted to travel freely, most individuals from the new member states are not yet authorised to work in Germany. As a result, they face many everyday forms of exclusion, including lack of access to medical services.…
Take a Stand Commentary
Of the estimated 214 million people who have migrated from poorer to richer countries in search of a better life, between 20 and 30 million have migrated on an unauthorized, or “illegal,” basis. All have health needs, or will in the future, yet most are denied health care available to citizens and authorized residents. To many, unauthorized im/migrants’ exclusion intuitively “makes sense.” As scholars of health, social justice, and human rights, …
Over-Foreignization” or “Unused Potential”? A critical review of migrant health in Germany and responses toward unauthorized migration
Medical aid as protest
This article examines organized efforts by citizens to provide medical aid to unauthorized migrants in Germany. A case study of an activist organization in Berlin highlights how prevailing forms of governance through citizenship are disrupted. Three major themes are explored. First, historical contingencies and policy realities explain why, given examples of grassroots protest by migrants in other settings, efforts in Germany have been driven pri…
Structural vulnerability and access to medical care among migrant street-based male sex workers in Germany
Health Concerns for Mexican Migrants in Central Florida
Contemporary debates on health and immigration reform often display a lack of understanding of how limited health care access can aggravate problems and contribute to major disparities. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, designed to ensure broader health insurance coverage for populations across the United States, is likely to actually reduce access to care for many immigrants by isolating them from the general, formerly uninsured, population…
Use of Semi-Structured Interviews to Explore Competing Demands in a Prostate Cancer Prevention Intervention Clinical Trial (PCPICT)
In this paper we report on findings from the first known study using qualitative methods to explore factors influencing physicians’ participation in an ongoing federally-funded prostate cancer chemoprevention clinical trial. We sought to identify ways to improve collaboration between researchers and physicians and enhance the success of future projects and employed purposive sampling to recruit physician/investigators who were involved or invited…
European Mobilities or Poverty Migration? Discourses on Roma in Germany
This article discusses the discursive framing of displacement and legitimacy for Roma migrants living in Germany to explore distinctions between “economic” and “forced” migration. Despite efforts towards their inclusion at the EU level, there has been an escalation in anti‐Roma sentiment across Europe simultaneous with increased transnational mobility. Based on media analysis and ethnographic research spanning 2011 to 2013, the inconsistencies an…
Health Care Access for Latino Mixed-Status Families
There are approximately 2.3 million mixed-status families in the United States, containing varied combinations of citizens, permanent legal residents, undocumented immigrants, and individuals in legal limbo. These families offer an opportunity to examine the functioning of the contemporary state and its penetration at the household level. For many Latino youth, experiences are framed not only by their own but other family members' legal status. T…
Immigration as a Social Determinant of Health
Although immigration and immigrant populations have become increasingly important foci in public health research and practice, a social determinants of health approach has seldom been applied in this area. Global patterns of morbidity and mortality follow inequities rooted in societal, political, and economic conditions produced and reproduced by social structures, policies, and institutions. The lack of dialogue between these two profoundly rela…
Special Issue Discourses of Displacement and Deservingness
Diversity Dilemmas and Opportunities
Shifting Discourses and Social Relations
Commentaries on Migration and Borders from the United States
Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William L. Alexander, Anthony Guevara, Mary K. Brannock, Xóchitl Bada, Andreas Feldmann, Beth F. Baker, Deborah A. Boehm, Guillermo Cantor, Heide Castañeda, Jeffrey H. Cohen, Walter A. Ewing, Christina Getrich, David Griffith, Lourdes Gu…
Representing the "European refugee crisis" in Germany and beyond
The European refugee crisis has gained worldwide attention with daily media coverage both in and outside Germany. Representations of refugees in media and political discourse in relation to Germany participate in a Gramscian "war of position" over symbols, policies, and, ultimately, social and material resources, with potentially fatal consequences. These representations shift blame from historical, political-economic structures to the displaced …
A Risky Place? Media and the Health Landscape in the (In)secure U.S.‐Mexico Borderlands
In this paper, we consider how news stories about one area of the U.S.‐Mexico borderlands, the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, further propagate notions of a region filled with people characterized as dangerously noncompliant with American ideals of citizenship, prosperity, and security. Using Ethnographic Content Analysis, we conducted a systematic analysis of Valley, state and national mainstream news media stories from 2010–2016 about health…
Sociology (37 works) · Political science (36 works) · Law (31 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (25 works) · Immigration (22 works) · Health care (17 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Medicine (15 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (15 works)