State Categories, Bureaucracies of Displacement, and Possibilities from the Margins

The promise and limits of inclusive public policy: federal safety net clinics and immigrant access to health care in the U.S

In the United States, exclusionary public policies generate inequalities within and across labor, financial, and legal status hierarchies, which together undermine immigrant well-being. But can inclusive public policies improve immigrant health? We examine whether and how an immigrant-inclusive federal program, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), shaped health care access and use among farmworkers over nearly three decades, paying particular attention to disparities at the intersection of nativity and legal status. Linking historical administrative data on the location and funding of FQHCs with the National Agricultural Workers Survey from 1989-2017, we first document trends in farmworkers' county-level proximity to FQHCs and identify a steady increase in FQHC access among undocumented farmworkers following the Affordable Care Act. Next, using time-series cross-sectional regressions with a battery of fixed effects, we find that living in a county where FQHCs are available and better resourced is associated with increased health care use among undocumented farmworkers, but not among U.S.-born or documented immigrant farmworkers. We also find that county-level access to FQHCs is associated with reduced reports of language barriers to care among both documented and undocumented foreign-born farmworkers. These findings suggest that FQHCs may improve access for immigrants who are typically excluded from U.S. health care institutions. Still, county-level FQHC infrastructure is not associated with cost-related barriers to care for any nativity or legal status groups. Taken together, our study highlights both the potential and constraints of inclusive public policies for promoting health equity in a welfare state context characterized by commodification and stratification.

Reproducing and reformulating categories of skill in regional and global migration governance: evidence from India and Bangladesh

Approximately one-third of the world's 169 million migrant workers come from the Asia and Pacific region, primarily working in temporary, low-wage jobs in the Gulf, where they face human and labor rights issues. In 2003, 12 Asian migrant-origin states formed the Colombo Process to address these labor concerns. This article examines and contrasts two major emigrant-origin states' - India and Bangladesh -behavior in the Colombo Process, a regional consultative process, and other multilateral migration governance fora, focusing on the social construction of skills. Both countries inherited a colonial legal system of emigration regulation which distinguished emigrants into "high-" and "low-skill" categories, which India continues to reproduce, while Bangladesh aims to reformulate their categorization. This article investigates the how, where, and when of the countries' emigrant categorization processes by tracing the categories' origins, their reproduction, and reformulation. This article highlights the significant role migrant-origin states play in the politics of skill.

Immigration concerns and social program avoidance: The roles of legal status and family composition among asian and latino communities

Objectives

Immigration policies significantly affect immigrants and their families' access to social programs. This study examines the role of legal status and familial composition in Asian and Latino adults' avoidance of social programs and assesses differences between the groups. We categorized respondents' familial composition based on whether all household members had the same citizenship status. We created two groups: respondents with cross-status ties and those without.

Methods

We use data from 1000 U.S. adults with proximal or distant ties to noncitizens (collected in September 2021) to employ multivariable generalized linear models with binomial family and logit link to assess avoidance of needed social programs due to immigration concerns.

Results

Our fully adjusted model reveals that compared to U.S. citizens without familial cross-status ties (i.e., all-citizen household members), legally precarious immigrants (LPI) without cross-status ties (odds ratio (OR)= 3.64, 95 % CI: 1.67-7.96), LPI with cross-status ties (OR=1.71, 95 % CI: 1.14-2.57), and U.S. citizens with cross-status ties (OR=1.66, 95 % CI: 1.14-2.40), were more likely to report avoidance of needed social support programs. Further, an interaction analysis shows that Asian lawful permanent residents with cross-status ties exhibit a higher likelihood of avoiding social programs due to immigration concerns compared to their Latino counterparts.

Conclusion

The far-reaching consequences of anti-immigrant policies on noncitizen individuals and their families, including U.S. citizens, may lead to disparities in access to social assistance programs that may exacerbate health disparities. Further, our findings suggest that immigrants' cross-status ties to U.S. citizen family members may be protective against the harmful effects of anti-immigrant policies.

Legal pluralism and the production of (un)certainty in lived migration orders

This article builds on three of Keebet von Benda-Beckmann's core concepts, namely, legal pluralism, social security and relational social theory, to reflect on the place of law in lived migration orders, both in the global north and in the global south. To do this, we build on three empirical case studies from our respective fieldsites in Germany, Belgium and the DRC. These cases illustrate how 'thinking with Keebet's work' not only offers useful 'sensitizing concepts' for the empirical study of migration law and migration studies more broadly, but also provides a much-needed conceptual vocabulary to speak to and intervene in current debates in more doctrinal legal scholarship on global migration law. With this double aim in mind, we first build on a legal pluralism perspective to show how migration governance can be better understood through the prism of 'lived migration orders'. We then suggest rethinking state sovereignty, citizenship, and individual human rights in light of historical and newly emerging relational configurations. Finally, we suggest a new avenue for reconceptualizing migration governance beyond rights-based categorizations of migrants by paying more nuanced analytical attention to situations of uncertainty and how they contribute to social (in-)security.

Understanding the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health of Latinx Children, Youth, and Families: Clinical Challenges and Opportunities

Latinx children, youth, and families in the United States have been disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic compared to non-Latinxs, experiencing a higher burden of deaths, economic adversity, parental stress, and mental health problems. At the same time, Latinx children, youth, and families in the United States have rich cultural and community resources that serve as a source of protection and promotion. To our knowledge, no special issue has been devoted to the impact of the pandemic on Latinx children, youth, and families, which limits opportunities to examine its implications for clinical theory, research, assessment, policy, and practice. To address this gap, we present this special issue entitled "Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of Latinx children, youth, and families: Clinical challenges and opportunities," a collection of nine articles written by Latinx scholars. In this introduction, we explain why it is important to center Latinx children, youth, and families and why we need to use a structural-intersectional approach. We summarize the articles in this collection by grouping them by themes: immigration and family separation; the impact of family economic adversity; school and family contexts of mental health; the pandemic experience of Latinx LGBTQ and AfroLatinx youth; and a model to imagine the future of Latinx children, youth, and families. We conclude with a brief summary and suggestions for future research.

The role of states in U.S. immigration: A study of population dynamics and subnational immigration laws

Legislative action on issues of immigration emerged prominently across and within US states throughout the 2000s. The emerging literature on this topic demonstrates the political motivations driving anti-immigrant laws that negatively impact the mobility of Hispanic/Latino and Foreign-born populations across US states. Considerable research identifies the political mechanisms driving restrictive state-level immigration policies. Despite the growth of this scholarly work, the impact of these laws within states requires further study. This paper broadens the approach to the study of restrictive state-level omnibus immigration laws (OILs) using a rich dataset to uncover the effects of these laws on compositional change for undocumented, foreign-born, and Hispanic/Latino populations from 2005 to 2017. Using a quasi-experimental design, I show that by passing omnibus immigration laws, states shape demographic patterns of Foreign-born populations. Specifically, I find that states that pass omnibus immigration laws experience a decrease in undocumented and Foreign-born populations relative to states that did not pass similar laws. Effects are estimated each year after the passage of OILs, providing additional insight into the temporal impact of omnibus immigration laws on the settlement patterns of these groups. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications of the multiple interior immigration law and policies, specifically at the state level, and their salience in shaping population dynamics across the United States.

Exclusion by design: The undocumented 1.5 generation in the U.S

This article focuses on Mexican individuals who grew up in the U.S. (1.5 generation) without documents and were not able to benefit from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or who were unable to renew their DACA. A 2012 Executive Action by former president Obama, DACA gave some undocumented youth relief from deportation and a 2-year renewable work permit provided they met certain criteria. Undocumented individuals DACA failed to reach have generally been overlooked in immigration research in favor of examining how DACA recipients' lives have been transformed by DACA. This project helps fill this gap by examining life outside of DACA, and how the program acted as an internal U.S. border of exclusion for many. This research also aids in understanding the impacts of changing government policies on vulnerable populations, especially those who are in some respects made even more vulnerable by their faith in the government, fear of the government, or are actively excluded from government programs. This investigation is part of a study that compares 20 DACA beneficiaries to 20 individuals without DACA. Through ethnographic methodologies and one-on-one interviews, this article examines the 20 research participants who fall outside DACA. It investigates why people who qualified for DACA did not apply, barriers to applying/renewing, and how members of the 1.5 generation were excluded from the program by restrictions such as date of arrival requirements. The article discusses what it means for research participants to live outside of DACA, and how they see their lives because they do not have DACA while others do. For example, what does it mean to age out of qualifying for DACA? What actions did individuals then take regarding their lack of legal status?