Deconstructing Immigrant Illegality: A Mixed-Methods Investigation of Stress and Health Among Undocumented College Students

Research has established that being undocumented is a risk factor for mental and physical health conditions. Much of this work emphasizes undocumented immigrants’ chronic stress, yet key questions about pathways to health remain. The mere state of being undocumented is viewed as a general stressor, without considering actual levels of stress or identifying dimensions of documentation status that contribute to overall stress levels. Drawing on surveys and interviews with undocumented students at the University of California, we uncover the everyday manifestations of four dimensions of immigrant “illegality”: academic concerns, future concerns, financial concerns, and deportation concerns, and their association with reported stress levels and self-rated health. Survey data establish undocumented students’ high levels of stress and poorer health, in comparison to previous research on other national samples. In a structural equation model, we found academic and future concerns to be significantly associated with higher stress, which was in turn, associated with poorer self-rated health. Financial concerns were not associated with higher perceived stress but were directly associated with poorer self-rated health. Notably, deportation concerns did not have any significant independent associations with stress or health. We use our qualitative data to identify specific stressors embedded within these four dimensions. Our findings inform understandings of the health risks arising from documentation status.     

A ‘master status’ or the ‘final straw’? Assessing the role of immigration status in Latino undocumented youths’ pathways out of school

Previous research on undocumented youth and young adults in the United States asserts that immigration status is a ‘master status’, wherein undocumented status overshadows the impact of other social locations. Drawing primarily on interviews with 45 Latina/o undocumented immigrant youth who stopped out of school, I assess whether the ‘master status’ explanation accurately characterises how immigration status shapes undocumented youths’ pathways out of school. Using an intersectional lens, I argue that multiple social locations disrupt educational pathways and set the stage for immigration status to emerge as the ‘final straw’ that pushes undocumented youth to leave school. Specifically, I show how race, class, gender, and first-generation college student status heavily shape undocumented youths’ educational journeys. I find that their resistance to these other forms of marginalisation is weakened by the emerging salience of undocumented status as a severe, relatively insurmountable legal barrier. I highlight the process through which these multiple social locations work together to lead undocumented youth to stop out of school. I contend that using an intersectional lens enhances understandings of how multiple social locations intersect and interact over time to marginalise immigrants.     

Model (undocumented) minorities and “illegal” immigrants: centering Asian Americans and US carcerality in undocumented student discourse

As the numbers of immigrant apprehensions, detentions, and deportations increase, and in context of anti-immigrant sentiment, education scholars must better contend with the way that carcerality affects undocumented student experiences. Carcerality refers to social and political systems that formally and informally promote discipline, punishment, and incarceration. Guided by Critical Race Theory, I examine interview data from 15 undocumented Asian Americans to show that the portrayal of undocumented student exceptionalism that typically characterizes the discourse on their experiences obscures the centrality of carcerality in shaping how young people with undocumented status navigate their lives. The narratives of undocumented Asian Americans represent a shift in undocumented discourse as these students de-emphasized their academic mobility, demonstrated a hyper-awareness of punitive immigration policies, and were traumatized by and practiced nondisclosure in response to deportation threats. However, while these students developed resistance strategies that they believed would both physically and psychologically protect their presence in the US, some reinforced white supremacist perceptions of the illegality of other undocumented immigrants. Undocumented Asian American experiences illuminate the nuanced relationship between the criminalization of undocumented immigrants, race, and education, and how a legacy of carcerality is vital to deciphering the contemporary educational experiences of undocumented students in the US.     

“They Are Clipping Our Wings”: Health Implications of Restrictive Immigrant Policies for Mexican-Origin Women in a Northern Border Community

We examine racialization processes experienced by women of Mexican origin in a northern border community during a protracted period of restrictive immigrant policies that have disparately affected Mexican-origin communities, and consider pathways through which these experiences may affect health. This grounded theory analysis draws on interviews conducted in 2013–2014 with 48 first, 1.5, and second generation Mexican-origin women living in Detroit, MI. Racialization processes blurred boundaries between Latinas/os, immigrants, and undocumented immigrants. Racialized policies and interactions required women to negotiate shifting and often precarious social and political terrain. We describe racializing markers used by agents of multiple institutions to assess the legal status of women and members of their social networks, shaping their access to the resources over which institutional agents held power. Specifically, we consider the dynamic mechanisms by which multiple legal, social, and employment institutions exacted immigrant policing and bureaucratic surveillance. These include: (1) interior and border immigration enforcement agents’ active surveillance of residents; (2) local law enforcement officials’ assertion of authority over driver’s licenses and contact with immigration officials, often in traffic-related encounters; (3) Secretary of State clerks’ discretion in assessing legal status and issuing driver’s licenses and state IDs; (4) social welfare agents’ scrutiny of citizenship status in determining access to nutritional, economic, and medical resources; and (5) employers’ exploitation of these structural vulnerabilities to justify unfair treatment of immigrant workers. We theorize several mechanisms, by which these processes affect health, including: stigmatization; hypervigilance; and restricted access to health-promoting resources.     

“My Life was Filled with Constant Anxiety”: Anti-Immigrant Discrimination,Undocumented Status,and Their Mental Health Implications for Brazilian Immigrants

Immigration reform and the various costs associated with undocumented immigration have been in national headlines in the past few years. The growth of Latinos as the US’ largest ethno-racial minority has sparked debates about the “browning” of the United States and led to an increase in anti-immigrant discrimination. While some researchers have documented the effects of racial discrimination on the mental health of ethno-racial minorities in the United States, less has explored how anti-immigrant discrimination and undocumented status influence the mental and psychological well-being of Latino immigrants, more specifically Brazilian immigrants, in the United States. Relying on data from in-depth interviews conducted with 49 Brazilian return migrants who immigrated to the United States and subsequently returned to Brazil, this paper will examine how their experiences living as racialized and primarily undocumented immigrants in the United States influenced their mental health. Specifically, I demonstrate that respondents experienced ethno-racial and anti-immigrant discrimination and endured various challenges that had negative implications for their mental health. This paper will also discuss additional factors that researchers should take into account when examining immigrants’ mental health and the challenges immigrants encounter in a racialized society with increasing anti-immigrant sentiment.     

Scapegoat citizens in times of austerity: the impact of the crisis on the immigrant population in Spain

The economic crisis has not yet produced alarming cases of racism and social conflict in Spain. However, as we shall analyse, there are indications that ‘immigrants’ are considered one of the first populations to be disposed of in times of crisis. A preference for nationals is increasing among traditional parties, alongside the rise of political parties with anti-immigrant agendas. Unemployment rates among the foreign born population are disproportionate in comparison with those of the native population. Migration policies that link residence permits to the possession of an employment contract have resulted in disturbing rates of irregularity. Health regulations have been amended to prevent irregular immigrants from accessing ‘universal’ health care. Police raids occur in public places to detain and expel undocumented immigrants, and ‘hospitality’ towards irregular immigrants is considered a criminal offence by a new reform in the Penal Code. As a parallel trend that is repeated in other European countries in times of austerity, we shall identify a depletion of universal rights, detention, and deportation as alienating strategies and technologies that are used to redefine the relations between citizens and ‘others’ within the contemporary citizenship regime. Leaning on Engin Isin's critical perspective on citizenship, this article argues that under the circumstances of crisis and austerity that harry Spain, the ‘immigrant’ is constructed as a disposable category, not only to balance the labour market and welfare state, but also to reinforce the notion of the national citizen as a subject of rights.     

Strange passages: carceral mobility and the liminal in the catastrophic history of American deportation

In the early twentieth century, the United States developed an integrated, continental deportation network based on rail travel. This new state apparatus would enable the restrictionists’ dream of immigration control and speed the elimination of those they deemed unfit for American life. It set a template for mass removal that would expand in the century to come. Scholars of immigrant detention and removal commonly employ Victor Turner’s concept of liminality to understand migrant experiences, but this paper suggests the need for an expanded theorization of the liminal as manifold rather than singular. Drawing on deportee case files and literature from the early twentieth century, this paper explores the complex, variegated and painful liminalities of the deportation journey. It argues that power affected deportees’ experience of space and time across different liminal zones and interprets the embodied catastrophe of deportation for migrant communities. If traumatic experiences reconfigure the meaning of time into a ‘before’ and ‘after’, deportation was an ongoing catastrophe that offered little sense of completion.     

On becoming Mexican in Napa: Mexican immigrant girls negotiating challenges to transnational identities

This article examines the ethnic identity formation of high school aged Mexican immigrant adolescent girls. The ethnic identity is new to them and acts as a coping mechanism that allows them to confront the racial order and gender monitoring they experience at home and at their high school. Being Mexican allows them to make meaning of their immigrant experience. The author contends that these girls rather than disconnecting from their national ethnic identity are developing a stronger sense of being Mexican than if they had never left Mexico. However, developing a strong sense of being Mexican comes with challenges. This article is based on 20 unstructured interviews conducted at a local high school in Napa, California. The interviews trace the identity transitions and challenges each girl experienced both before migration and after they arrived in the US. The author finds that they develop an ethnic identity based on their memories of Mexico that they share amongst each other where they long to continue to be part of their old community. The stories of girls point to the identity transitions Mexican immigrant youth experience. Their stories also point to how identities are not clean sequential transitions, but are rather messy, conflicting, and contradictory.     

The public view of immigrant integration: multidimensional and consensual. Evidence from survey experiments in the UK and the Netherlands

Despite the growing interest in immigrant integration in a wide range of scholarly literature, there is less interest in how integration might be understood by the public. Using a survey-embedded conjoint experiment in the Netherlands and the UK, we ask the public what they think constitutes successful immigrant integration. We show that the public has a multidimensional view of integration, which goes beyond a simple preference for cultural assimilation. We discover that there is a remarkably stable hierarchy of preference of integration outcomes, which is a matter of wide spread consensus in both our countries among different social groups and people with different attitudes on immigration. Using the British data we also show an integration penalty for immigrants of non-white origins. Our article places public opinion of immigrant integration at the heart of a rapidly expanding research agenda into the social and political impacts of immigration.     

‘Felons are also our family’: citizenship and solidarity in the undocumented youth movement in the United States

The undocumented youth movement began in the United States in the mid-2000s. Drawing on qualitative research with undocumented young organisers in California, this article explores how relationships between undocumented youth, the wider undocumented population, and legal citizens have been understood in narratives of citizenship in the movement over time. It is argued that, paradoxically, the movement’s retreat from prioritising a pathway to legal citizenship for the most ‘eligible’, made visible historic and contemporary ties to the United States and its peoples that are obscured in hegemonic narratives of contemporary citizenship. In becoming more inclusive of the wider undocumented population, positions of solidarity with marginalised US citizens have also emerged. In the context of attacks on some racialised and other marginalised social groups during Trump’s presidency, such solidarity is even more vital.     

Gay,Mexican and immigrant: intersecting identities among gay men in Los Angeles

This paper draws on a multi-sited ethnographic research study of sexual identity formation among self-identified gay Mexican men in Los Angeles, Mexico City and Cuernavaca. Relying primarily on in-depth interviews with 24 gay immigrant men and extensive participant observation in Los Angeles, this research explores the intersection of sexuality, social class, ethnicity and immigration in the participants' daily lives and identity formation processes, the potential ways that transnational social networks shape their identities, and the ways that sexuality impacts the contours of their transnational networks. This article argues that the participants' identities as gay men are best understood as hybrid constructions that integrate elements of the gender-stratified activo/pasivo model of homosexuality and the object-choice gay model of homosexuality, and that the integration of these models into their identities is impacted by social class, geography, and immigration. Further, this paper argues that the subjectivities of the gay immigrant men in this study are best understood within a transnational intersectionality framework which conceptualizes identities as hybrid constructions that are produced through the interaction of several salient social forces.     

Mexican illegality,black citizenship,and white power: immigrant perceptions of the U.S. socioracial hierarchy

While some scholars contend that immigrant integration is predicated on a strategic distancing from Blacks and closeness to Whites, others argue that highly racialised immigrants share more commonality with Black Americans than Whites. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Mexican immigrant newcomers to Los Angeles, California, this article examines how immigrants make sense of their position in U.S. socioracial hierarchy vis-à-vis other racialised groups. I show that as immigrants navigate U.S. social, racial, and political landscapes, they come to view ‘American-ness’ and the citizenship status inherent in it as a key marker of distinction between themselves and those they deem ‘American’. Immigrants thus view their group status as an inferior one relative not only to the dominant White group, but also to Black Americans, albeit for qualitatively different reasons. Findings highlight how the vulnerability of ‘illegality’ not only reinforces existing social boundaries with Whites, but also shapes the nature of socioracial boundaries with Black Americans that can hinder the potential for racial solidarity and has broader implications for the U.S. socioracial hierarchy.     

Advocacy and surveillance: primary schools teachers’ relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in Ireland

The article analyses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study in Ireland that examines interactions between asylum-seeking mothers and primary school teachers, and highlights the significance of teachers’ understandings of asylum in shaping home-school communications. Mothers and children in this study were living in Direct Provision, collective accommodation for asylum seekers in Ireland. The research identifies a number of concerns including: poor communication between the school and mothers, only English being used as a medium of communication with the mothers, and mothers being directly and indirectly excluded from Parent Associations. Interactions of teachers with asylum-seeker mothers demonstrated a lack of recognition that their situation is different from other migrants/newcomers and is particularly challenging because of the because of living in Direct Provision and under the threat of deportation. The research shows that primary schools are drawn into ambiguous relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in their attempts at advocacy and surveillance, as they are expected to facilitate integration, while at the same time dealing with the uncertainty facing asylum-seeking parents and children.     

Moral or civic ties? Deservingness and engagement among undocumented Latinas in non-profit organisations

As alternatives to mainstream institutions, local non-profit organisations (NPOs) are important sites for immigrant civic engagement; yet, there is little research on how immigrants negotiate the benefits of NPOs. We use ethnographic fieldwork and multiple in-depth interviews with 39 NPO staff and Latina immigrants in San Francisco, California. We offer new insights about how undocumented, low-income, Latina mothers – a group constrained by multiple barriers – negotiate direct assistance and civic engagement in NPOs. Although NPOs provide both direct services and civic engagement opportunities, we find that moral judgments within the broader anti-immigrant and anti-welfare climate impact how Latinas feel the need to ‘give back’ or ‘ration’ services in NPOs. Additionally, the expectation that direct services are an entrée for civic engagement has consequences for how Latinas negotiate deservingness and work to preserve their self-worth. For some, these expectations depress further engagement or drive intergroup divisions.     

Support and setback: how religion and religious organisations shape the incorporation of unaccompanied indigenous youth

Churches are recognised as pillars of solidarity and support within immigrant communities but rarely in regard to youths’ social incorporation. Drawing on 24 months of participant observation of two Catholic churches and in-depth interviews with unaccompanied Guatemalan Maya youth church members in a Los Angeles, California community, this study examines the role of the church and religion in youth’s incorporation trajectories. I find that the church and its religious practices provide unaccompanied youth with spaces and resources of incorporation support. Over time, youth also experience financial and socioemotional setback as they become involved in church subunits that are organised by an ethnoracial hierarchy that disparages indigenous Latinos, require financial contributions, and teach reliance on God to change one’s circumstances. This study shows that immigrant-serving organisations can unwittingly reproduce inequality when they offer individualised solutions to structural marginalisation. Findings also demonstrate that incorporation is as much a socio-economic process as a socioemotional one, as immigrant youths’ mental and emotional health instability can impinge on their social participation.     

Is coverage enough? Persistent health disparities in marginalised Latino border communities

ABSTRACT

What has been the fate of those living in the place once dubbed the ‘county that needs the Affordable Care Act the most’? This article presents results from a longitudinal, five-year ethnographic study of healthcare access in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It explores reasons why this region along the U.S./Mexico border has the highest rate of uninsured persons in the country and remains among the most medically underserved, despite some increases in coverage accompanying the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It argues that the convergence of healthcare and immigration policy, framed by a unique regional history and social environment, has had multiple direct and indirect impacts on health and healthcare access. It examines the impact of the ACA on access for Latino immigrants and mixed-status households, which contain a mix of citizens, legal residents, and undocumented persons. It argues that the ACA aided in shifting the conversation to promoting private insurance coverage and away from more fundamental access barriers for low-income working populations ineligible for its benefits. This has eclipsed discussions about fundamental causes of persistent and highly racialised health disparities.     

“<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nobody Knows Me No More</Emphasis>”: Experiences of Loss Among African American Adolescents in Kinship and Non-Kinship Foster Care Placements

Youth in out-of-home care confront numerous disruptions in relationships and social environments, but how they experience such disruptions and their perception of these changes as losses has received little attention in the research literature. Furthermore, the increased use of kinship foster care raises questions regarding the effect of such placements on children’s experience of loss. Due to the overrepresentation of African American children in both the child welfare system and in kinship placements, race is a central variable in understanding the kinship care context and how it impacts loss. Using interview data from 18 African American adolescents in kinship and non-kinship placements, qualitative findings are presented regarding differences in relational and locational disruptions and in perceptions of those disruptions. Compared to non-kinship participants, adolescents in kinship placements experienced fewer disruptions in relationships and location and also experienced the restoration of losses as well as outright relational gains in entering their relative placements. Implications for policy, practice, and research are also discussed.     

Formal determinants of informal arrangements: housing and undocumented immigrants in Rotterdam

"Using data on undocumented immigrants in the city of Rotterdam, it is argued that peculiarities of the Dutch housing market, especially the large degree of decommodification of the housing stock, lead to a specific housing situation and housing career of illegal immigrants.... The housing situation of undocumented immigrants in Rotterdam clearly shows how formal arrangements create conditions for informal practices.... A comparison between Dutch and U.S. data shows that differences in formal arrangements have substantial effects on the potential of ethnic solidarity within immigrant communities."     

Searching for belonging and confronting exclusion: a person-centred approach to immigrant settlement experiences in Canada

ABSTRACT

Drawing on an analysis of three immigrant narratives, this paper employs a person-centred approach to immigrant integration in Canada. It examines how immigrants interpret the inclusions/exclusions that mark their integration experience and the consequences these experiences have on their social identities and sense of belonging. Analysis demonstrates that for immigrants a sense of belonging does not grow in a linear fashion; rather, it grows, stalls, dissipates and/or flourishes in relation to the ties and identifications that immigrants are enabled to forge. Broader structural and historical forces prefigure immigrant inclusion and exclusion in Canada in ways that reflect a hierarchy of migration and belonging. We argue that a recognition of Canada’s ‘hierarchies of belonging’ and the multidimensional nature of social inclusion/exclusion complicate integration metaphors that flatten the uneven social terrain of immigrant belonging.     

Navigating health care: brokerage and access for undocumented Latino immigrants under the 2010 Affordable Care Act

ABSTRACT

Brokerage is a prominent mechanism that explains access for Latino immigrants to many American institutions. However, few studies examine the dual nature of brokerage in answering questions on access to health care for undocumented Latino immigrants. The growing importance of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and ethnic navigators connecting immigrants to health care under the 2010 Affordable Care Act calls attention to the duality of brokers and its role in access. The study draws from 44 in-depth interviews with providers, clinic directors, navigators, and immigrant patients and two years of fieldwork in FQHCs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area (2011–2013). Results show that brokers enable access through coaching and myth-busting but they also hinder it through scrutiny and bureaucratic filtering. The widespread dependence on brokerage, I argue, leads to ersatz brokerage, such as when providers navigate the health-care system for the undocumented without the appropriate linguistic resources or coordination. Furthermore, the study shows that the duality in brokerage generates misinformation, churning, and alienation. Understanding the relational processes that both include and exclude vulnerable populations from needed services enhances theories of immigrant integration and can help design more efficient policies and address inequalities related to documentation status.