Foreign Bodies: Migrants, Parasites, and the Pathological Nation

During the last three decades of the twentieth century, California underwent a major demographic transformation, changing from overwhelmingly Vhite" and U.S.-born to increasingly Latino and foreign-born.1 An important consequence of this metamorphosis was that, during the 1990s, the state witnessed a notable flourishing of nativism, producing a political and cultural climate that was distinctly hostile toward immigrants, especially Mexicans. Much of this hostility centered on the economic consequences of migration, such as the economic costs of these newcomers. One common nativist claim was that California had been forced to