‘Survival First, Health Second’: Geographies of Environmental Racism and the M(other)work of Promotoras de Salud
| dc.contributor.advisor | Pulido, Laura | |
| dc.contributor.author | Faiver, Cristina | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-09-13T19:07:19Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2021-09-13 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The Port of Long Beach is one of the biggest polluters in majority Latinx communities of color in Long Beach, California, and the biggest funder of local promotora de salud (community health worker) led childhood asthma education programs. Promotoras de salud are an indispensable component of the state’s public health response to asthma and other health effects of environmental racism in the Los Angeles Harbor region of Southern California. This study asks: How are promotoras de salud called upon by the state to remediate and resolve environmental racism in their own communities? And, What roles do promotoras de salud perform in the regional response to environmental racism in Southern California? I draw from my experiential knowledge of working with promotoras de salud in Long Beach from 2010-2013. I share my testimonio as a means to render visible the fragmentation and unfulfilled promises of working toward social justice as a public health worker. Second, I analyze the publicrecord of promotoras in public health literature, state and nonprofit records, news media, and more to construct a digital archive of local promotora presence in Long Beach between 1995-2016. In my archive I read for the silencing and dispossession of promotora agency, and theorize the ways that state power operates on the ground. I also read for every day resistance, and intersectional approaches to social reproductive labor and care that promotoras enact in their communities. This project makes two interdisciplinary interventions. First, I argue that the public health arm of the state should be understood as a site of struggle for environmental justice. The public health state apparatus depends on funding from racial capitalist enterprises to fund community health projects. Simultaneously, it relies on the subjugated labor of promotoras de salud to attend to the health needs of Latinx communities. Despite the limitations of state public health models, I also argue that promotora care work cannot be encapsulated by the neoliberal frame of health equity due to its grounding in the struggle for collective resistance and survival. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2023-08-27 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26726 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | air pollution | en_US |
| dc.subject | Chicana and Latina feminist theory | en_US |
| dc.subject | critical environmental justice | en_US |
| dc.subject | promotoras de salud | en_US |
| dc.subject | public health | en_US |
| dc.subject | Southern California | en_US |
| dc.title | ‘Survival First, Health Second’: Geographies of Environmental Racism and the M(other)work of Promotoras de Salud | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Geography | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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