Browse Exhibits (19 total)
Undocumented, Unseen, and Unwell: Accessing Healthcare in the US South Between 2010–2024
This exhibit is designed to contextualize and highlight the challenges that undocumented migrants have faced in accessing healthcare in the U.S. South over the past decade. Drawing from a wide range of materials—including oral histories, newspaper articles, and public records—it attempts to uncover the systemic, legal, and social barriers that shape migrants' encounters with the healthcare system.
Purpose and Importance
Access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in the United States remains unequal. Today, most undocumented people are excluded from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s coverage options, leaving them dependent on a fragmented safety net of emergency rooms, free clinics, and community health centers. These services vary drastically by region, and nowhere is this disparity more visible than in the U.S. South. In the South, state-level decisions, underfunded infrastructure, and political hostility toward immigrants have created some of the country’s harshest conditions for undocumented patients.
This exhibit will focus on the period from 2014 to 2024—a decade marked by shifting federal policies. This timeframe captures a critical juncture in healthcare access, public discourse, and migrant advocacy in the South.
Why the South?
The U.S. South is sometimes overlooked in national conversations about immigration and healthcare, yet it has become one of the fastest-growing destinations for migrant communities, particularly states like Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama. At the same time, many Southern states have rejected Medicaid expansion under the ACA, increasing the risk of medical neglect for undocumented populations. The region’s rural geography and legacy of racial inequality make it a key place to study to understand how policy can shape healthcare access.
This project builds directly on our website's themes of marginalization, structural violence, and the historical roots of healthcare inequality. It serves as a case study that shows how the past can inform present-day disparities. This exhibit is aimed at an audience of academic peers, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and activists working towards more equitable healthcare solutions.
Call to Action
This is meant to be more than a digital timeline, it is an invitation to consider how law and society intersect to affect millions of people. By incorporating lived experiences and structural analysis, the exhibit challenges viewers to reconsider what it means to offer “care."
Suggested Readings
Secondary sources analyze, interpret, contextualize and/or comment on primary sources. Drawing from research conducted for individual projects, students contribute to this list of annotated secondary sources. These academic articles, books, reports, and other peer-reviewed materials cover diverse aspects of southern history with attention to migration and mobility.
Jacob Lawrence, And the migrants kept coming. 1940-1941.
Primary Sources
Primary sources are firsthand accounts and experiences that offer evidence of the time period or event they describe. Drawing from research conducted for individual projects, students have developed annotated primary sources that highlight a variety of experiences and histories from across the US South and beyond.
President Ronald Reagan signs the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 in the Roosevelt Room.
A Note on Kudzu
In Fall 2023 we read Soniah Kamal's Georgia Review essay, "Writing the Immigrant Southern in the New New South," in which the author treats kudzu as a representation of the migrant experience in the US South. Taking inspiration from Kamal, the collective discussed how migration has changed the physical, cultural, economic, and political character of the South across time, much like Kudzu has. Migrants, like kudzu, have established communities (or roots), and in the process stitched the South together to form diverse cultures.
Thinking with kudzu as a metaphor for the migrant experience in the US South, our collective asked: how have different migrations and movements shaped the South? What does it mean to be southern? What is the importance of place in the making and understanding of identity?
The resilience that migrants have shown in adapting to new environments. Like kudzu, migrants have often been classified as invasive and harmful to what is "native." Yet their lasting benefits to the Southern economy, culture, and history are undeniable and need to be highlighted. Our cohort's projects illustrate the multitude of interactions, pressures, obstacles, and experiences that inform what it means to be a migrant or a descendant of migrants in the U.S. South.
A found poem on kudzu. Collaboratively written by the Fall 2023 cohort.
Hillbilly Highway Migrant Southerners: Places of Labor and Connection, 1920s- 1980s
For a full-screen view, follow this link.
As I first began to work on this project my goal was to find moments where migrants from the South travelled along Hillbilly Highway and found moments of joy and community despite desperate economic conditions. Hillbilly Highway is the term coined by Steven Earle in 1986 denoting the path Southerners and Appalachians took to Midwestern cities when looking for economic opportunities. With the mechanization of mines, hundreds of thousands of migrants came to the North to find work.
Without thinking twice, I stated that I only wanted to look for these moments of humanity or connection, away from workspaces, factories, or fields. However, along the way, I began to realize how I was negating the true experience of a working-class, Southern migrant. I was demanding them to work and survive in adverse conditions while documenting their lives in detail. I was asking too much of the historical actors I claimed to serve. With this realization, I began to reorient myself and what it meant to uncover moments of community when individuals were working seven days a week for twelve-hour days. To start, where have previous scholars found evidence of a working-class community? What were their findings, and how did they unveil the relationship between the workplace and community building?
I came upon Robin Kelley and his article, “We Are Not What We Seem:” Rethinking the Black Working Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South. Kelley is a Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his work theoretically grounds my entire project. In this article, Kelley builds upon Anthropologist James C. Scott’s infrapolitics concept. Infrapolitics or the daily struggle waged by subaltern groups “should be invisible… is in large part by design — a tactical choice born in prudent awareness of the balance of power.” The theory of infrapolitics challenges the researcher to not ignore tiny moments of resistance. In stealing moments for themselves and being proud of their identity, the migrants participated in infrapolitics and influenced the political world in which they were living. Daily actions by migrants had consequences for existing power relationships and shaped the communities they were a part of.
Rather than looking for huge parties, secret sex scandals, or migrants doubled over in laughter, I must look for the small moments.The moments where they snuck away from the production line, took a drag off a cigarette, and sang a song. These seemingly tiny moments are what I need to be looking for, and this is what I have found.
Projects
The Kudzu Experience hosts original projects by undergraduate students at Emory University. These projects range in style, theme, and tone, yet all bring our attention to important southern histories and contemporary experiences shaped by interconnected keywords:
migration | mobility | movement
Projects by Cohort
Projects by Theme
What makes a carpet-bagger?
This project explores the history and evolution of the term carpet-bagger and its inextricable links to mobility and the history of Reconstruction, as well as exploring the realities of the original carpet-baggers in the South of their time.
The 'carpet-bagger' was a divisive figure in post Civil War America. It referred to a Northerner who moved to the South, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, i.e. during Reconstruction. Many Northerners made this migration during this period, whether motivated by political aspirations, in pursuit of riches in the radically changed cotton farming industry, or simply seeking a better life. The term 'carpet-bagger' was quickly and firmly established into the social and political fabric of the period, exacting a variety of different responses from different groups. The term survives to this day, applied nowadays to politicians who seek election in areas to which they have no local connection.
An Incomplete History of Mexican Fort Worth
At the start of this project, I wanted to focus on the demographic development of Fort Worth's North Side neighborhood and why it became it a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, and what it can say about the city and immigration.
In researching for this project, I was not surprised to one, find Fort Worth history so focused on notable white residents and industries run by white people that shaped the city and two, discover a general lack in scholarship and history of the Mexican and Hispanic residents of the city. The sources that examined and documented the history of Mexican immigration and residents to Fort Worth were largely focused on the early 20th century. I wrote what I could find – and given more time, I am sure I can find satisfying post-World War II histories of Mexican Fort Worth that answer my questions about other largely Mexican parts of the city and what the demographic, economic, and social trends in the North Side say about the future of the North Side.
The pages in this project feature a look at Mexican immigration to Texas in the early 20th century, a general history of the city of Fort Worth and the North Side, the pull factors that brought Mexican immigrants to Fort Worth, how these Mexican immigrants settled in the North Side and in the city, and lastly, a reflection of the gaps in the research.
Note: Click on the photographs and maps to see their citations.
Salud Sin Fronteras
“Salud Sin Fronteras” is an oral history project centered on the healthcare experiences of undocumented Mexican immigrants in Florida, a state entrenched in anti-immigration policies. The project aims to provide an intimate and localized perspective on the intersection of immigration and healthcare.
Through in-depth interviews, the stories of five undocumented Mexican immigrants who have collectively lived in Florida for over 20 years are captured. These individuals have witnessed firsthand the dynamic shifts in policies, the accessibility of healthcare resources, and the structural frameworks of healthcare systems. Their narratives are invaluable in understanding the disparities faced by immigrants compared to their experiences in their home country.
Various aspects of their healthcare journeys are delved into, including experiences during hospital and clinic visits, the areas they hope to see change, and the impact of their undocumented status on their treatment and well-being.
Voces de Migrantes: After the Harvest in Rural South Carolina
This experimental film employs two methods - oral history and videography - to document the lived experiences of three migrants who are connected to agricultural production in the rural U.S. South. The video unfolds as a series of one-minute shots capturing the rural landscape of Ridge Spring, South Carolina. The scenery is accompanied by three voice recordings of the oral histories as the background narration. The narratives are from a migrant farmworker, an ex-migrant farmworker, and a non-traditional clothing vendor.
In The Shadows: The Harsh Reality of Migrant Workers in the US
A short documentary video talking about the harsh working conditions of migrant workers, highlighting news stories of workers from the South, the H-2A visa program, and the lack of safety precautions and conditions in their jobs.
Health and Workplace Safety in Southern Migrant Labor
Migrants make up a large and essential part of the US southern labor force. Because of this, it is crucial to understand how migrant labor intersects with access to the healthcare system. This journalistic project highlights not only the intersection of labor and healthcare, but also the role that legal status plays in workers' lives. The piece is based on an original interview, with context offered on topics such as access to insurance and workplace conditions.
The Feeling of Power: Lost & Found
The Feeling of Power: Lost & Found explores contemporary student experiences and movements of racialized and other marginalized groups on campus. Oftentimes, we find ourselves thinking “It’s 2023, this can’t be happening,” but unfortunately our grievances and needs for change have not been fully addressed. In the form of a zine -- an artistic expression that gives life to our inner thoughts -- this project centers the experiences of Black, Latinx, and First-Generation/Low-Income students as told by students for students.
Una Pintura de Emory
Emory University prides itself on being a highly diverse and prestigious university but all too often, it fails to support and represent that very diversity it claims to care for. This artwork aims to dive deeper into students' feelings of belonging and understanding Emory's student diversity from a more personal angle. Beyond background, home states and countries, race, or gender, diversity comes from self-identity, family, and community.
The Pull of Southern Industries
The Pull of Southern Industries follows migration routes from different southern-based industries: for example, poultry processing during the 1970s-1990s and of seasonal movements of migrant farmworkers throughout the agrarian south in the 1900s. This project focuses on labor-induced migration as many households and individuals who choose to migrate do so for economic betterment.