This volume draws from the author’s qualitative study of Somali immigrants in Minnesota to explore the issues that surround immigration, race, health and healthcare. Immigrants often bear the unequal burden of structural deficits in the health-care systems of countries they migrate to. They also experience legal, social, cultural, economic, behavioral, and communication barriers which more often than not deter access to and utilization of quality healthcare services and set into motion deep-set socioeconomic inequities in health-care provisioning.

Existing literature has explored the question of how immigration affects health and healthcare access, but the question of historical-systemic, socio-economic/socio-structural, political, cultural-behavioral, intersectional, and place-based factors that condition ‘access’ to healthcare unevenly for diverse population groups is as of yet understudied. This book examines this question, as well as issues related to place-based experiential aspects of health and how construction of migrant identities impacts health and healthcare. The book aims to create new, diverse, and adequate knowledge that address critical needs of new immigrant communities towards equitable and culturally competent healthcare service and delivery.

Dr. Sudarshana Bordoloi is a Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Minnesota State University, Mankato. An accomplished scholar, educator, and academic leader, her work reflects an interdisciplinary focus grounded in community‑engaged research and practice, with a strong commitment to social justice. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of place, power, and lived experience in a global context.

Her teaching and research specialize in human and cultural geography; migration and immigration studies; health geography and population studies; race, class, and gender studies; and the political economy of international development. Dr. Bordoloi is the author of The Political Economy of Uneven Rural Development: The Case of the Nonfarm Sector in Kerala, India (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has also contributed numerous peer‑reviewed articles and book chapters and serves as a reviewer for leading academic journals.

Dr. Bordoloi holds a PhD in Geography from York University, Toronto, Canada, and an MPhil in Population Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. She previously served as Assistant Professor of Sociology at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, and as Associate Director of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) at Minnesota State University, Mankato.