Exploring the relationship between immigration and exposure to criminal victimization among El Paso Latinas/os

ABSTRACT

Scholarship surrounding immigration and victimization has grown substantially in recent years. Prior research suggests that immigrant statuses generally protect against victimization, particularly among Latinas/os; however, seldom do studies examine the specific factors or processes that immigrant statuses signal towards. In this study, we analyze data from El Paso, Texas, Latinas/os to understand how four factors – immigrant generation, linear acculturation, familism, and machismo – impact the exposure to criminal victimization. To do so, we adapt a risk and resilience framework to help make sense of our findings. Our results indicate that of the four factors examined, only linear acculturation was significant in the full sets of models. The implications of these findings as well as limitations are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigration
• Latinos
• Latina/o victimization
• El Paso

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2023.2297728

Notes

1. While the 1.5-generation is widely examined in other social science disciplines (e.g., education), its use in criminology and criminal justice is still relatively rare. The inclusion of this ‘in-between’ generation is important because first-generation immigrants have different developmental experiences depending on the age they migrated to the U.S (see Rumbaut 2004). Thus, if an immigrant arrived as a child or early adolescent, they would likely have had greater exposure to U.S. culture and thus may acculturate to the U.S. at a quicker rate (Guerra and Craig 2023).

2. For both the mixed effects logistic regressions and negative binomial regression analyses, odds ratios and incidence rate ratios, respectively, are presented in the tables for ease of interpretation.

3. In lieu of this, we conducted sensitivity analyses to understand if the relative magnitude of reported experiences varied substantially across households of different sizes. This was done for three reasons. First, in this study the conceptual and methodological link between variables rooted at the individual-level are assumed to have an, but not wholesale, influence on the sets of outcomes. This is possible because the question related to the outcome had asked if the respondent or any member of their household had experienced an exposure to a criminal victimization event. Second, the extent of knowledge of household-level victimization comes from an individual that is well positioned to know about those experiences; however, it remains that the most accurate reflection of that individual’s exposure to victimization is entirely precise only when there is a household of one. Third, the certainty of others’ exposures with victimization in the household are less certain with more people in the household. Based on these considerations, we generated alternate versions of the outcome variables and multiplied each by the inverse proportion of the number of the individuals living in the household. As such, with more people in the household, the lower the relative values of each outcome. After this, we reran all mixed effects regressions conveyed in Tables 2 and 3. While there were some minor changes in the bivariate models (e.g., familism switched to significant at the p < .05 level), there was only one change in any full model. In the full model (i.e., model 5) of Table 3, we found that a lower percentage of people living in the neighborhood for at least a year was associated with higher exposure to victimization. Overall, after accounting for the uncertainty of asking an individual about their experiences and those living in their homes, the primary results remain largely the same. This suggests that the experiences reported here may better reflect the individual respondent more so in a direct and possibly vicarious fashion. These analyses are available upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Guerra

Chris Guerra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. His primary research focuses on immigration and antisocial behavior. More specifically, he aims to provide nuance to the host of mechanisms involved in examining the immigrant experience (e.g., immigrant generations, statuses, day-to-day behavior) and a variety of negative life outcomes such as criminal offending, victimization, and alcohol use. His work leverages criminological and interdisciplinary incorporations of theory and advanced research statistical methodologies – in particular, individual-level approaches. His secondary research interests are varied and include policing and cybercrime. His recent work has appeared in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies and Prevention Science.

Carolina Licerio

Carolina Licerio is a Research Assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research interests include psychosocial components of the Latina/o-crime relationship including fear of crime and victimization. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso where she is currently a graduate student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies.

Amanda Goodson

Amanda Goodson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Security Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. Her research focuses on victimology with primary interests in violence against women and system responses to crime victims. Her recent work has appeared in Criminal Justice and Behavior, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Feminist Criminology, among others.