Managing US–Mexico “border health”: An organizational field approach

Abstract

During World War II Mexican and US health professionals and organizations constructed a transnational organizational field to manage the border's public health problems. Despite barriers to inter-organizational cooperation, including disparate administrative structures and North–South stratification, the field's transnational approach to health on the border has continued for 60 years. Using archival data to track changes in the number and types of organizations, this article argues that the field practitioners call “border health” reconfigured during the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) decade from an era of loosely organized professionals to a specialized bureaucracies era. This change brought new vitality to border health, with transnational ties increasing and diversifying, but has not weakened entrenched cross-border inequalities. The organizational history of the US–Mexico border health field demonstrates how macro-politics and inter-organizational stratification shape transnational public health problems.