The Gendered Effects of Local Immigration Enforcement: Latinas' Social Isolation in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix

Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma: Participant Perspectives on an In-Person and Online Implementation of an Intervention to Promote Mental Health in Latina Immigrant Women

Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma is a community-based intervention designed to increase social support and coping strategies among Latina immigrant women at risk for depression and anxiety. To assess satisfaction and perceived efficacy of the intervention, we conducted interviews with 32 participants that received the intervention in-person and online. Participants across both modalities found the program supportive in maintaining their mental health. They learned stress management techniques and found the support from facilitators and other participants helpful. Those receiving the intervention in-person were able to connect with other participants more easily than those that received it online. Those receiving it online noted distractions at home that made it challenging to fully engage. Community-based interventions that promote coping strategies and social support are a promising strategy for addressing mental health disparities among Latina immigrant women.TRN: NCT03749278, date of registration: November 21, 2018.

Urban Violence, Migration and Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana Use among Transnational Students in Northern Mexico

This article reports on the findings of a study of the relationship between transnational experiences in the United States (US) and the use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana among 7th grade students (n = 1418). The study was guided by a cross-national framework for research on immigrant health and assessed the accumulation of risk factors for transnational adolescents. Data came from a survey conducted in 2017 in Nogales, Mexico. In this study, the last 30-day prevalence of use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana among students was 21.7%, 8.3%, and 2.4%, respectively. Most students were born in Nogales (69.6%), while 10.5% were born in the US, 7.5% attended school in the US, and 3.6% engaged in health-related risk behaviors while living in or visiting the US. Students with transnational experiences, such as attending school in the US, reported the highest 30-day prevalence of tobacco (13.3%) and marijuana (9.5%) use. After adjusting for family, school, access to substances and neighborhood violence variables, students who engaged in health-related risk behavior in the US had significantly increased odds of alcohol and marijuana use while later attending school in Mexico. The article discusses the findings from a prevention science perspective and provides implications for policy, practice, and future research on the Mexico-US border region.

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

In this presidential address, I argue for the importance of state-created categories and classification systems that determine eligibility for tangible and intangible resources. Through classification systems based on rules and regulations that reflect powerful interests and ideologies, bureaucracies maintain entrenched inequality systems that include, exclude, and neglect. I propose adopting a critical perspective when using formalized categories in our work, which would acknowledge the constructed nature of those categories, their naturalization through everyday practices, and their misalignments with lived experiences. This lens can reveal the systemic structures that engender both enduring patterns of inequality and state classification systems, and reframe questions about the people the state sorts into the categories we use. I end with a brief discussion of the benefits that can accrue from expanding our theoretical repertoires by including knowledge produced in the Global South.

"Me Cuesta Mucho": Latina immigrant mothers navigating remote learning and caregiving during COVID-19

Before the pandemic, immigrant mothers from Latin America in the United States typically shouldered the weight of caregiving for children, maintained jobs, and managed transnational care responsibilities. But as COVID-19 erupted across the globe, the combination of gendered roles and a collapsing economy ruptured the already fragile arrangement of childcare and paid labor for Latina immigrant mothers. In this article, I examine how school closures intersected with Latina women's identities and social positions as immigrant mothers who suddenly confronted job loss, illness, and increased familial responsibilities. I show how Latina immigrant women renegotiated relationships to schooling, becoming teachers overnight in an unfamiliar system. Mothers shifted educational aspirations for their children to prioritize safety, as they managed increased stress and conflict while schools remained remote. I demonstrate how the breakdowns in care infrastructure forced mothers to rethink the elusive balance between paid labor and childcare, especially for those who were undocumented. Throughout, I explore how immigrant women's intersecting identities left them vulnerable to structural racism and exclusionary immigration policies. Despite the multiple layers of struggle, women continued to support their children's education and socio-emotional well-being, even in the face of multiple levels of gendered, racialized inequalities.

The unreachable doorbells of South Texas: community engagement in colonias on the US-Mexico border for mosquito control

Mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit continue to place millions of people at risk of infection around the world. Novel methods of vector control are being developed to provide public health officials with the necessary tools to prevent disease transmission and reduce local mosquito populations. However, these methods will require public acceptance for a sustainable approach and evaluations at local settings. We present our efforts in community engagement carried out in colonias of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in south Texas for mosquito surveillance, control, and ecological projects. Along the US-Mexico border the term colonia refers to impoverished communities that are usually inhabited by families of Hispanic heritage. The different engagements were carried out from September 2016 to February 2019; during this time, we had three distinct phases for community engagement. In Phase 1 we show the initial approach to the colonias in which we assessed security and willingness to participate; in Phase 2 we carried out the first recruitment procedure involving community meetings and house-to-house recruitment; and in Phase 3 we conducted a modified recruitment procedure based on community members' input. Our findings show that incorporating community members in the development of communication materials and following their suggestions for engagement allowed us to generate culturally sensitive recruitment materials and to better understand the social relationships and power dynamics within these communities. We were able to effectively reach a larger portion of the community and decrease the dropout rate of participants. Progress gained with building trust in the communities allowed us to convey participant risks and benefits of collaborating with our research projects. Community engagement should be viewed as a key component of any local vector control program as well as for any scientific research project related to vector control. Even in the face of budgetary constraints, small efforts in community engagement go a long way.

Possibilities for Sociological Research to Reduce Inequalities: Observations from the Immigration Scholarship

This commentary brings immigration research to the conversation on sociology's possibilities to respond to inequality. It argues that legal status today has become an important dimension of inequality given its enduring impact across most areas of life and effects that extend laterally to all members of a family and across generations. The piece highlights the possibilities for sociologists to contribute to policy discussions but also the limitations of research in policy spaces given the antiscience resistance in the sociopolitical context today.

Stress, social support and their relationship to depression and anxiety among Latina immigrant women

OBJECTIVE

Latina immigrant women in the United States are at increased risk of adverse mental health outcomes due to economic, political, cultural and social stressors related to migration and resettlement. However, few studies have described how stress and social supports are related to depression and anxiety symptoms among Latina immigrant women.

METHOD

This cross-sectional study used survey data collected from a community-based sample as part of the Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma (ALMA) study to describe levels of stress, social support, depression and anxiety among Latina immigrant women (N=153). We also estimated associations between stressors, social supports and mental health.

RESULTS

At baseline, 29% of participants reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms and 32% of participants reported moderate to severe anxiety symptoms. In adjusted regression models, stressors including social isolation (β=0.2, p<0.001), perceived stress (β=0.6, p<.0001), and law/immigration enforcement stress (β=0.3, p=0.04) were associated with higher levels of depression symptoms. Perceived stress (β=0.6, p<0.001) and stress associated with meeting basic needs (β=0.6, p<0.001) were associated with higher levels of anxiety symptoms, while social support received through positive social interactions was associated with fewer anxiety symptoms (β=-0.8, p=0.03).

CONCLUSIONS

Latina immigrant women experience a number of stressors associated with immigration and their social position, which in turn are associated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety. Future research should examine how social support, along with programs and policies that reduce stress, can improve mental health outcomes in this population.

(Il)legality and psychosocial well-being: Central Asian migrant women in Russia

Legal status has shown far-reaching consequences for international migrants' incorporation trajectories and outcomes in Western contexts. In dialogue with the extant research, we examine the implications of legal status for subjective well-being of Central Asian migrant women in the Russian Federation. Using survey data collected through respondent-driven sampling in two large cities, we compare migrants with regularized and irregular legal statuses on several interrelated yet distinct dimensions of subjective well-being. We find that, regardless of other factors, regularized status has a strong positive association with migrants' perception of their rights and freedoms but not with their feeling of being respected in society. Regularized status is positively associated with self-efficacy and negatively with depression. Yet, no net legal status difference is found in migrants' views on their relations with other migrants or on treatment of migrants by native-borns. The findings are situated within the cross-national scholarship on the ramifications of racialized immigrant (il)legality and its implications for membership and belonging.

Legal Violence, Health, and Access to Care: Latina Immigrants in Rural and Urban Kansas

Using interviews and ethnography started in 2016 in rural and urban Kansas, we examine the consequences of an amplified immigration enforcement combined with a local limited health care infrastructure that reproduce legal violence manifesting on Latina immigrants' health, access to care, and community participation. We highlight the conditions rooted in place that generate short- and long-term negative impacts for Latina immigrants' health. Fear and anxiety about the deportation of themselves and their family members make them ill and also generate apprehension about contacting medical institutions, driving, and spending time in public spaces. These circumstances coalesce in women's lives to block access to medical care and undermine women's roles in their communities. Following gendered expectations, women turn to their informal networks to seek health care for their families. In the context that the enforcement regime has created, these ties can turn exploitative.