This talk examines the often-competing visions of wellbeing among immigrants and representatives of the state like health professionals and policymakers. It arises from a book project that analyzes how rigid social structures and misattributed understandings of cause (culture) and effect (disease) often lead to enduring health issues. It treats health and care (broadly defined) as windows into the connected systems of the built environment, public health laws and practices, and citizenship. This research demonstrates how federal, state, and municipal health and immigration legislation (from about 1850 to present) engender continuity by triangulating the history of Brazilian public health research, laws and policies, and globally dominant ideas about disease and other health issues. Diverse approaches, sources, and methods explore the interactions between health, immigration, and physical structures such as workplaces and living spaces, asking how health is created by state-built environments ranging from health clinics and hospitals to sidewalks and streets. 


Jeffrey Lesser is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Brazilian Studies and a History Department faculty member at Emory University in Atlanta. He was named the first full-time faculty director of the Halle Institute for Global Research in 2017. He has been a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo’s Institute for Advanced Studies since 2015.

In his current research on health, immigration, and the built environment he engages with researchers, health professionals, and patients. For the last four years he has been conducting archival research and observing Dr. Fernando Cosentino‘s medical team at the Bom Retiro Basic Health Clinic in São Paulo, Brazil. This clinic is part of the Brazilian National Health Service, known as SUS.