Familial Vulnerability: Legal Status and Mental Health within Mixed-Status Families
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Keywords
Mixed-status families, mental health, structural vulnerability, deservingness, precarity, U.S.–Mexico borderlands
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2021.1879061
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.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Medical Anthropology, v. 40, no. 7, p. 639-652
Scholar Commons Citation
Logan, Ryan; Melo, Milena A.; and Castaneda, Heide, "Familial Vulnerability: Legal Status and Mental Health within Mixed-Status Families" (2021). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 143.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/ant_facpub/143
