INTRODUCTION

This volume brings together studies from a variety of disciplines on the changing historical and contemporary health status of migrant and minority groups in different societies across the world. The essays cover a wide geographical range, including Britain, the United States, Australia, India, Malaysia and Africa. The chapters present many different types of migrants and minorities, and explore how health issues around these groups have interacted with developing ideas of ethnicity and race. Contributors examine the historical origins and contemporary power of stereotypical views of immigrants as importers of disease, and of minorities as sources of infection to the host or majority society. Ideas of ethnicity and race are shown to have been shaped by, and to have themselves influenced, the construction of medical ideas and the development of health services.