Familial Vulnerability: Legal Status and Mental Health within Mixed-Status Families

ABSTRACT

Mental and emotional well-being are intimately entangled with immigration status, personal relationships, and the broader political environment. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in South Texas including interviews with mixed-status families, this article illustrates the spillover impacts affecting mental and emotional health of family members with different legal statuses. Building on the notion of “structural vulnerability,„ we propose the concept of familial vulnerability, a lens which highlights how racialization, legal status, and discrimination affect the family unit. Our analysis of the mental health impacts on family members within mixed-status families may inform necessary changes to programs and policies to improve the needs of this population.

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RESUMEN

El bienestar mental y emocional está íntimamente relacionado con el estatus migratorio, las relaciones personales y el entorno político en general. Basándose en cinco años de investigaciones etnográficas en el sur de Texas con familias de estatus mixto, este artículo demuestra los impactos indirectos que afectan la salud mental y emocional de miembros de familias con diferentes estatus legales. Inspirandonos del concepto de vulnerabilidad estructural, proponemos el concepto de vulnerabilidad familiar, un lente que resalta cómo la racialización, el estatus legal y la discriminación afecta la unidad familiar. Los resultados pueden ayudar a informar cambios necesarios en los programas y políticas de salud pública para mejorar las necesidades específicas de salud mental en esta población.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed-status families
• mental health
• structural vulnerability
• deservingness
• precarity
• U.S.–Mexico borderlands

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the funding agencies, the anonymous reviewers, and the special issue editors for their feedback.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (#1535664) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Notes on contributors

Ryan I. Logan

Ryan I. Logan, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Stanislaus. His research interests include community health workers, promotores de salud, health disparities, and migration. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4004-0096 Address correspondence to: Ryan I. Logan, Department of Anthropology, Geography, & Ethnic Studies, California State University, Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382. Email: [email protected].

Milena A. Melo

Milena A. Melo, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Her research interests include immigration, citizenship, the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, health inequalities, and marginalized populations. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6253-7749 Email: [email protected].

Heide Castañeda

Heide Castañeda, PhD, MPH is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She is the author of Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families (Stanford University Press, 2019) and co-editor of Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States (NYU Press, 2018). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5892-3279 Email: [email protected].