Anti-Immigrant Racism Within the Brazilian Welfare State and the Expulsion of Cuban Doctors

Abstract

The chapter presents an analysis establishing a relation between racism, immigration from the world system’s peripheries and the Welfare State in Brazil. Racism is analysed not as a particular phenomenon against immigrants and refugees, but rather as a continuous action of the colonial and slave structure of Brazilian society. The chapter aims to analyse the racism against the Cuban medical doctors who worked for the Brazilian Unified Health System. The background of these discussions is the connection between the import of Cuban doctors and the hard attacks to dismantle the Welfare State, which intensified after the manifestation of the world crisis in Brazil in 2014. Finally, the chapter shows that the racism against the Cuban doctors is connected to the general attack—not interrupted by the pandemics—on the culture of universal health care which is embodied by these doctors.