Mixed-Status Families and Immigration Interior Enforcement Policies: Effects on Clinical Practice and the Intraethnic Therapeutic Dyad

ABSTRACT

This article explores the sociopolitical and intersubjective enactments that unfolded when working with a mixed-status immigrant family facing parental deportation. Through the integration of a sociopolitical and intersubjective conceptualization, dynamics pertaining to inclusion, exclusion, domination, and subjugation are examined. The psychological exploration of the clinical treatment is guided by Altman’s (2010) three-person psychology and Stolorow’s (1991, 1993) theory of intersubjectivity. The analysis also incorporates dynamics pertaining to the ethnocultural transference and countertranference (Comas-Díaz & Jacobsen, 1991, 1995) and to associative identification processes (Shonfeld-Ringer, 2000). The case illustrates how dynamics of racialization, embedded within an increasingly White Nativist, ideological deportation immigration context, infiltrated the intraethnic, therapeutic relational encounter. The therapist took part in an intragroup, racialized reenactment that could have led to the therapist becoming part of the oppressive structure, but the therapist avoided doing so, explaining her internal process for rectifying the situation.

KEYWORDS:

• Deportation
• ethnocultural
• immigration
• intersubjectivity
• intraethnic dyad
• mixed-status families

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria del Mar Farina

Maria del Mar Farina, PhD, LICSW is an Assistant Professor at Westfield State University as well as an Adjunct Professor and Assistant Director of Field Work at Smith College School for Social Work. She also maintains a clinical private practice in Holyoke, Massachusetts, working primarily with the Latino community, and has presented her work in both the United States and Europe.