title: Immigrant dreams: legal pathologies and structural vulnerabilities along the immigration continuum.
abstract: This article contextualizes the results from a mixed methods study of the living and working conditions of Latino agricultural workers in northern Montana. The results of both the health needs assessment survey and the retrospective life-histories of these migrant farmworkers paint a picture of a population that is barely surviving in the United States, even after decades of living and working here. This article interrogates Singer's notions of "harmful social conditions and injurious social connections" that characterize syndemics of ill health through a detailed description of how different immigration statuses create particular local biologies embedded in the structural violence of powerlessness and lost life potentials. For Mexican immigrants to the United States, the immigration system itself is a powerful pathogen.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, School of Nursing, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho 83209, USA. carteliz@isu.edu
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Cartwright
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants; D004641:Emigration and Immigration; D006040:Goals; D006630:Hispanic or Latino; D006801:Humans; D008800:Mexico; D009009:Montana; D012940:Social Problems; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014171:Transients and Migrants; D035862:Vulnerable Populations