The U.S. health care system's informal “Third Net” of fragmented, alternative clinics provides essential care to undocumented, low-income, and uninsured migrants while simultaneously exposing the structural inequities and systemic limitations of the formal health care system.
Friday, November 13, 2026
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Pacific Time)
Bunche Hall, Rm 10383 & Online
The United States’ health care system not only consists of a formal safety net, but also an informal and disjointed network of organizations that offer basic care to millions of migrants. This “Third Net” provides free or low-cost health care for the undocumented, low-income, and uninsured migrants who are excluded from the formal system. This groundbreaking study sheds light on the existence of the Third Net and its implications for the overall inequalities in the US health care system.
The Third Net is made up of diverse providers with varying levels of service, organizational culture, and mission. These providers operate in unconventional settings, such as mobile clinics on wheels; pop-up clinics in repurposed spaces; and unlicensed, makeshift clinics run by health activists. Despite their unassuming appearances, these clinics are vital resources for marginalized populations that often go unnoticed by the general public, revealing the shortcomings of our formal health care system.
By examining these alternative health care spaces, authors Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Erin Hoekstra, & Anthony M. Jimenez expose the inequities entrenched in the broader health care system and urge a reevaluation of it entirely in order to address these injustices.
Winner, 2025 Thomas & Znaniecki Best Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association International Migration Section
Speaker
Dr. Lisa Sun-Hee Park is Professor and Chair of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Entitled to Nothing: The Struggle for Immigrant Health Care in the Age of Welfare Reform as well as co-author of The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy and The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden.
Discussant
Dr. Randall Kuhn is a Professor in the Fielding School of Public Health. He is a demographer and sociologist focused on the social determinants of health among vulnerable populations, with a focus on homelessness, immigrant health, and global health. He leads the Periodic Assessment of Trajectories of Housing, Homelessness and Health Survey (PATHS), a representative, monthly survey of Los Angeles County's unhoused population that is being used for evaluations of field-based medical programs.
Download file: _Third-Net-flier-q2-s1y.pdf
Sponsor(s): Center for Study of International Migration, Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative at UC Berkeley, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego, Global Migration Center at UC Davis