Parenting Across Two Worlds: Low-Income Latina Immigrants’ Adaptation to Motherhood in the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 711-738 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen K. Vesely ◽  
Bethany L. Letiecq ◽  
Rachael D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latina Immigrants ◽  
Immigrant Mothers ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
Gendered Roles ◽  
Community Supports ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study explored how low-income documented and undocumented Latina immigrant mothers negotiate motherhood and adapt to life in new cultural and structural contexts. Grounded in ecocultural theory, we analyzed data from 21 in-depth interviews with Latina immigrant mothers to surface how their experiences of motherhood in the United States were shaped by their country of origin experiences and their situatedness in the United States. We documented emergent tensions related to their immigration context, often driven by changes in their legal status as they crossed borders, changes in family and community supports, and differing cultural expectations of their gendered roles as caregivers and family members. These tensions forced mothers to renegotiate and adjust their perceptions, identities, and roles as women, mothers, partners, and members of larger, often transnational kin and community networks. Implications of these tensions and identity and role shifts in the context of immigrant family life in the United States are discussed.

scholarly journals Redefining American Families: The Disparate Effects of IIRIRA's Automatic Bars to Reentry and Sponsorship Requirements on Mixed-Citizenship Couples

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Lilly López
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Illegal Immigration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Reunification ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Legal Immigration ◽  
American Families

With passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), the goal of discouraging illegal immigration and the legal immigration of the poor triumphed over the longstanding goal of family unity in US immigration policy. This shift resulted in policy changes that prevent some mixed-citizenship families from accessing family reunification benefits for the immigrant relatives of US citizens. Two specific elements of IIRIRA — (1) the three- and 10-year bars to reentry, and (2) the minimum income thresholds for citizen sponsors of immigrants — have created a hierarchy of mixed-citizenship families, enabling some to access all the citizenship benefits of family preservation and reunification, while excluding other, similar families from those same benefits. This article details these two key policy changes imposed by IIRIRA and describes their impact on mixed-citizenship couples seeking family reunification benefits in the United States. Mixed-citizenship couples seeking family reunification benefits do not bear the negative impacts of these two policies evenly. Rather, these policies disproportionately limit specific subgroups of immigrants and citizens from accessing family reunification. Low-income, non-White (particularly Latino), and less-educated American families bear the overwhelming brunt of IIRIRA's narrowing of family reunification benefits. As a result, these policy changes have altered the composition of American society and modified broader notions of American national identity and who truly “belongs.” Most of the disparate impact between mixed-citizenship couples created by the IIRIRA would be corrected by enacting minor policy changes to (1) allow the undocumented spouses of US citizens to adjust their legal status from within the United States, and (2) include the noncitizen spouse's income earning potential toward satisfying minimum income requirements.

Children

2019 ◽  
pp. 97-116
Author(s):  
Sara Rosenbaum ◽  
Kay A. Johnson ◽  
Rachel Gunsalus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The Impact

This chapter focuses on the impact of social injustice on children, primarily in the United States, emphasizing children’s rights in a legal context. It begins with a discussion of the legal status of children in society, citing international standards and U.S. law. It describes how social injustice affects the health needs of children. It describes how poverty, environmental hazards, public policies related to civil and human rights, and other factors threaten the health of children. It analyzes the underlying factors and roots of social injustice that affect children, including maldistribution of income and failure to invest in the neediest families. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what needs to be done and the roles of health workers in addressing social injustice that affects children. A text box describes how the United States compares with other high-income countries in addressing the needs of children. Another text box focuses on saving children’s lives in low-income countries.

DACAmented Homecomings: A Brief Return to Mexico and the Reshaping of Bounded Solidarity Among Mixed-Status Latinx Families

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-165
Author(s):  
Alissa Ruth ◽  
Emir Estrada
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Family Dynamics ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigrant Community ◽  
Country Of Birth ◽  
Deferred Action ◽  
Mixed Status ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study builds on the intergenerational family dynamics literature among mixed legal status families. Through in-depth interviews with beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) who traveled to Mexico and their undocumented parents who stayed in the United States, we uncover how their journey back to their country of birth influenced their roles within their families and the immigrant community. DACA recipients experienced feelings of guilt when traveling back to Mexico and leaving their parents behind, but they adopted a new role of family ambassador and transnational mediator. Through this experience, they developed a greater empathy toward their parents’ sacrifices and reshaped their bounded solidarity with their parents and the immigrant community. As a result, they justify a movement away from personally identifying with the traditional Dreamer narrative.

scholarly journals Territorial Exceptionalism and the American Welfare State

2021 ◽  
pp. 1639
Author(s):  
Andrew Hammond
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Food Assistance ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Federal Food

Federal law excludes millions of American citizens from crucial public benefits simply because they live in the United States territories. If the Social Security Administration determines a low-income individual has a disability, that person can move to another state and continue to receive benefits. But if that person moves to, say, Guam or the U.S. Virgin Islands, that person loses their right to federal aid. Similarly with SNAP (food stamps), federal spending rises with increased demand—whether because of a recession, a pandemic, or a climate disaster. But unlike the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa receive a limited amount of federal food assistance, regardless of need. That’s why, after Hurricane Maria, despite additional congressional action, over a million Puerto Rican residents lost food assistance. And with Medicaid, federal law caps medical assistance for each of these five territories, a limit that does not exist for the fifty states or the District of Columbia. This Article draws much-needed attention to these discrepancies in legal status and social protection. It surveys the eligibility rules and financing structure of disability benefits, food assistance, and health insurance for low-income Americans in the states and the territories. A comprehensive account of these practices provokes questions about the tiers of citizenship built by a fragmented and devolved American state. Part I invokes the scholarship on social citizenship, the idea that an individual cannot meaningfully participate in society without some modicum of economic security. Part I then explores the tension between that normative commitment and one of the defining features of the American welfare state—federalism. It then elaborates the exceptional legal status of Americans who live in U.S. territories. Part II provides a comprehensive overview of federal food, medical, and disability assistance and, in doing so, demonstrates how the American territories inhabit a different and, in many ways, dilapidated corner of the American welfare state. Part III begins with an analysis of ongoing cases in federal court that challenge this facial discrimination. It then canvasses legislation introduced in Congress that would make significant progress in putting territorial Americans on par with Americans in the fifty states. To conclude, Part IV brings the states back in, using the earlier discussion of territories as an invitation to imagine an American welfare state built on a foundation other than a racial order.

More than victims: Resiliency of undocumented Latinas near Chicago, United States, and the strategic use of psychological suffering in obtaining legal status

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-368
Author(s):  
Stephanie Jean Kohl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Law ◽  
Application Process ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Psychological Suffering ◽  
Visa Application ◽  
Biological Citizenship

Caught between abusive partners and restrictive immigration law, many undocumented Latina women are vulnerable to domestic violence in the United States. This article analyzes the U-Visa application process experienced by undocumented immigrant victims of domestic violence and their legal advisors in a suburb of Chicago, United States. Drawing on theoretical concepts of structural violence and biological citizenship, the article highlights the strategic use of psychological suffering related to domestic violence by applicants for such visas. It also investigates the complex intersection between immigration law and a humanitarian clause that creates a path towards legal status and eventual citizenship.

Consular Protection and Solidarity across Borders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Délano Alonso
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Large Populations ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Working Together

This chapter demonstrates how Latin American governments with large populations of migrants with precarious legal status in the United States are working together to promote policies focusing on their well-being and integration. It identifies the context in which these processes of policy diffusion and collaboration have taken place as well as their limitations. Notwithstanding the differences in capacities and motivations based on the domestic political and economic contexts, there is a convergence of practices and policies of diaspora engagement among Latin American countries driven by the common challenges faced by their migrant populations in the United States and by the Latino population more generally. These policies, framed as an issue of rights protection and the promotion of migrants’ well-being, are presented as a form of regional solidarity and unity, and are also mobilized by the Mexican government as a political instrument serving its foreign policy goals.

Force, Fraud, and Coercion—What Do They Mean? A Study of Victimization Experiences in a New Destination Latino Sex Trafficking Network

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 456-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Copley Sabon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Latina Immigrants ◽  
Strict Interpretation ◽  
New Destination

In response to increasing Latino new destination migration in the United States, Latino sex trafficking networks have emerged in many of these areas. This article examines victimization experiences of Latina immigrants trafficked by a regional network operating in the Eastern United States drawn from law enforcement records and interviews with legal actors involved in the criminal case. The stories shared with law enforcement by the Latina victims gives insight into their lives, experiences in prostitution, and the operation of a trafficking/prostitution network (all lacking in the literature). Through the analytical frame of social constructionism, this research highlights how strict interpretation of force, fraud, coercion, and agency used to define “severe forms of trafficking” in the TVPA limits its ability to recognize many victimization experiences in trafficking situations at the hands of traffickers. The forms of coercion used in the criminal enterprise under study highlights the numerous ways it can be wielded (even without a physical presence) and its malleability as a concept despite legal definitional rigidity. The lack of legal recognition of the plurality of lived experiences in which agency and choice can be mitigated by social forces, structural violence, intersectional vulnerabilities, and the actions of others contributes to the scholarly critique of issues prosecuting trafficking cases under the TVPA and its strict legal definitions.

PERCENTAGE OF UNINSURED CHILDREN HAS INCREASED

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 1051-1051
Author(s):  
STUDENT
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Health Care Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Insurance ◽  
Care Policy ◽  
Low Income Families ◽  
Uninsured Children

The proportion of children in the United States without private or public health insurance increased from roughly 13 percent to 18 percent between 1977 and 1987, according to a new study by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR). The growth in the proportion of uninsured children in poor and low-income families over the decade was even more dramatic—it rose from 21 percent to 31 percent.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document