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PhD Candidate José Pérez published in journal Security Dialogue on article about health insecurity in Brazil

March 22, 2023

PhD Candidate José Pérez published in journal Security Dialogue on article about health insecurity in Brazil

Jose Perez headshot

On March 20, PhD Candidate José Pérez had his coauthored article, "The intersectionality of health (in)security: Healthcare, disposable workers, and exposure within Brazil’s pandemic politics" published in the peer-reviewed journal, Security Dialogue. Pérez coauthored the article with Dr. Vinícius Mendes of Radboud University, The Netherlands. 

From the article's abstract, Brazil is currently ranked second globally in terms of total fatalities from the Covid-19 pandemic. Pérez and Mendes analyze three aspects of the pandemic that have become salient in Brazilian society, namely access to healthcaredisposable workers, and exposure to the virus. The authors delineate the intersectional impact of gendered inequality, neoliberal ideologies, and racial hierarchies within these three themes. Using media and scholarly interpretations of Covid-19, and other secondary empirical and statistical data,  Pérez and Mendes' findings reveal that during the pandemic, women’s labor and health concerns have been undervalued. Additionally, Pérez and Mendes find that exploitative working conditions have been exacerbated, and Afro-Brazilians have been put in situations of higher exposure to the virus in both public and private spaces. This article highlights the need to better examine how public health, systems of oppression and exclusion, and (in)security overlap with each other.

Pérez is currently in Brazil doing fieldwork, sponsored by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, for his dissertation. Congratulations José!