Anti-immigrant Policies Research Articles

An Emerging Reactive Ethnicity Among Latinxs in Tennessee

The burgeoning Latinx communities in the U.S. South provide rich case studies for examining the identity formation and group consciousness of children of Latin American immigrants. This paper explores the identities and sense of belonging of 1.5- and second-generation Latinxs who have come of age in Tennessee, a Southern state that has experienced a surge in immigration from Latin America in recent decades. In-depth interviews with Latinxs who have grown up in Tennessee reveal how these individuals contemplate their identities in relation to questions of belonging to (and within) U.S. society. A shift toward developing a reactive ethnicity is evident as Latinxs convey how perceived interpersonal discrimination coupled with recent national and local anti-immigrant policies drive ethnic group solidarity. These factors influence individual life choices and encourage participation in social and political activism. Such reactions will have long-term ramifications for local Southern societies.

트럼프 정부의 반(反) 이민정책의 강화와 미국-멕시코 국경장벽 - 미국의 이민정책 논쟁과 사회 양극화를 중심으로 -

The purpose of this study is to examine the spread of the immigration debate in the United States and the resulting social polarization from theoretical and historical perspectives. In particular, this article focuses on the analysis of the background and causes of the political, social, cultural and ideological polarization of American society due to the strengthening of the Trump’s anti-immigrant policy and the construction of the US-Mexico Border Wall. Although President Trump''s presidency is over, but his anti-immigrant policies and the Border Wall construction are still dividing, subjugating, and differentiating not only the United States, but the world. Examples include the Latino illegal immigration procession in 2018, the federal shutdown in 2019, and the occupation of the Capitol m 2020. At this point, the analysis of Trump’s anti-immigration policy is a task that must be performed not only for the sake of unity, equality, and safety in the United States from a narrow viewpoint, and the world from a broad perspective. The research method of this study analyzes government documents, news, papers and books based on literature research, and theoretically utilizes multiculturalism, assimilationism, and substantive conflict theory. Trump’s anti-immigration policy has both positive and negative aspects, but it has been evaluated as having more ‘disadvantages’ than ‘benefits’, which has many implications for Korea which is transitioning to a multicultural society.

"Which Clinic? Pre-Covid or Post-Covid?": Immigration Policy Uncertainty, Immigrant Serving Organization, and the Response to COVID-19.

BackgroundThis article examines how immigration policy uncertainty during the Trump presidency shaped how immigrant serving organizations (ISOs) responded to the needs of immigrant community members in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe draw on semi-structured interviews conducted over the summer of 2020 with 31 directors and program coordinators of ISOs and health clinics in three southern states (KY, NC, SC).ResultsResponding to anti-immigrant policies laid the groundwork for organizations to respond quickly and nimbly to COVID-19 related upheavals. However, organizational flexibility may signal organizational precarity, especially given the long-term impacts of both Trump administration immigration policies and the COVID-19 pandemic.DiscussionOur findings underline how ISOs facilitate access to health and social services for immigrant families. Our findings suggest that this organizational adaptability may signal a relationship between organizational precarity and immigration policy uncertainty that could have an impact well beyond the pandemic.

111. Chart review of Latinx youth patients in Aqui Para Ti: Parental Separation and Adolescent Health and Well-being

In the US, 1 in 4 Latinx children belongs to a family with mixed immigration status; at least one parent being undocumented – meaning a significant portion of these children may be separated from a caregiver due to deportation. In 2017, with the increase in anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, Aqui Para Ti/Here for You (APT), a clinic-based youth development program for Latinx youth and their families, found an increase in both anxiety and parental separation in its patient population. The purpose of this study is to describe qualitatively immigration journey and deportation related familial separation experiences via manual review of narrative notes in electronic health records.

Racialization, discrimination, and depression: A mixed-method study of the impact of an anti-immigrant climate on Latina immigrant mothers and their children

Grounded in an ecological transactional model, this mixed-method study describes the impact of the 2016 presidential election and ensuing anti-immigrant climate on Latina immigrant mothers (n ​= ​30) with authorized and unauthorized legal status and their children in New York City. Mothers’ narratives, collected between March and June 2019, indicate that the anti-immigrant climate precipitated family discussions about immigration, racism, ethnicity and legal status at home. Media coverage of anti-immigrant policies and immigration enforcement activities, threats of immigration raids via the news and social media, and bullying at school caused child distress and prevented mothers from delaying discussions about immigration with their children. Mothers were distressed not only due to worries about their own legal vulnerability, but also by the inability to assuage children’s distress. Mothers indicated that their children felt unsafe due to the immigration climate and had difficulties focusing in school. Mothers also indicated that, regardless of child age, their children experienced a range of separation anxiety symptoms including worry about being separated from loved ones and fear of being away from home. A significant proportion of mothers reported elevated symptoms of depression on the PHQ-2 (31%) and psychological distress on the Kessler-6 (26%). Quantitative analysis indicates that immigration-related discrimination contributes significantly to maternal depressive symptoms and psychological distress. Mothers’ narratives triangulate these quantitative findings; mothers conveyed feelings of disillusionment, sadness, anxiety, anger, distress and frustration due to experiences of discrimination at their children’s schools and due to an inability to access mental health supports for their children. Mixed methods inform our understanding of how a charged anti-immigrant political climate can affect parent-child-school interactions and the mental health of Latina immigrant mothers and their children. Implications are discussed.

Whose Crisis? Syrian Refugees and the Turkish Stage

Since the eruption of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the arrival of refugees in Turkey has been unprecedented in the country's history. Theatre practitioners have been slow to address this migratory moment, but an exception has been Istanbul-based Dostlar Tiyatrosu's 2017 production Göçmenleeeer, a translation of Romanian–French playwright Matéi Visniec's Migraaaants. Developed in the context of Europe's own migratory ‘crisis’, Migraaaants is composed of a series of vignettes that critique European refugee policy and the deadly economies that it has prompted in the continent's borderlands. What happens when Migraaaants is produced in a national context where the binary of European ‘hosts’ and non-European ‘refugees’ gives way to another set of political identities? How do we assess the emergence of a shared paradigm of ‘crisis’? And finally, where does crisis stand in relation to our ability to imagine a transnational aesthetics of political resistance to anti-immigration policies?

The COVID-19 Pandemic, the Crisis of Care, and Mexican Immigrants in the United States

In the transition from Fordist to flexible accumulation in the last decades of the twentieth century, social reproduction was externalized onto families and communities. In the United States, this “crisis of care” was mitigated by the incorporation of illegalized Mexican immigrants’ low-cost reproductive labor in private and public services. From a feminist perspective on social reproduction and migration, we argue that the impacts of the COVID-19 economic crisis on Mexican immigrant communities were related to the specific ways that immigrants’ labor was incorporated into the circuits of social reproduction. Drawing on interviews with migrants from rural central Mexico in the United States, we analyze how immigrants absorbed the worst effects of the crisis by cheapening their labor, transferring unpaid reproductive labor to other household members, and engaging in informalized activities. Anti-immigrant policies exacerbated the precarious situations of undocumented immigrants and mixed-status Mexican families during the pandemic.

“In México, I was someone, but here I am a nobody:” an immigrant mother and daughter moving beyond love to facilitate new ways of being

In this article, we present parallel narratives of an immigrant youth and her mother who have had to maneuver continual and abrupt interruptions in family cohesiveness and other daily experiences due to anti-immigrant policies and the materialization of being cast beyond love. We highlight how they created spaces of self-transformational love and coalitional love to resist measures of exclusion and redraw how they participated in a divided world. We also argue how educators must encourage these spaces of love and work against practices that contribute to the alienation and suppression of immigrant students and their families. Rather, educators must put a human face to these human struggles and break free from any pretense that this work should solely occur outside the bounds of a school’s borders.

Borders, Migration and Xenophobic Policies in West Africa

Abstract The 1979 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Protocol, or Article 59 of the 1993 ECOWAS Revised Treaty, encapsulates the terms and conditions for a visa-free and borderless economic community. It is geared towards decolonising the colonial borders and encouraging economic activity. But despite the ratification of the Protocol, documented and undocumented migrants continue to be expelled, blocked at borders and prevented from doing business, and suffer other xenophobic mistreatment, within the sub-region. The member states of ECOWAS have implemented anti-immigrant policies, from which Community citizens are rarely exempted. The article argues that the political class in the various states in the sub-region has nurtured and exploited a xenophobic consciousness, which has prevented the growth of class consciousness and protects their power base. The xenophobic policies of West African states have also created the necessary conditions to impede the implementation of the ECOWAS Protocol.

The good ol’ days: White identity, racial nostalgia, and the perpetuation of racial extremism

A prevailing theme in White nationalist rhetoric is nostalgia for a time when Whites dominated American culture and had unchallenged status. The present research examines a form of collective nostalgia called racial nostalgia and its association with negative intergroup attitudes and extreme ideologies (White nationalism). In Studies 1 and 2, racial nostalgia was associated with higher racial identity, anti-immigrant attitudes, and White nationalism. Study 2 revealed that racial nostalgia was related to extreme ideologies, in part, through perceptions that immigrants and racial minorities posed realistic/symbolic threats. Study 3 manipulated nostalgia using a writing prompt (“America’s racial past” vs. “games of America’s past”) and an identity prime (prime vs. no prime). Racial nostalgia was higher in the racial prompt versus the games prompt condition, regardless of identity prime. Furthermore, there were significant indirect effects of the nostalgia manipulation on support for anti-immigrant policies and endorsement of White nationalism through increased racial nostalgia and its association with perceived threats. These findings show that racial nostalgia can be a maladaptive form of collective nostalgia linked to a sense of loss and threat, and can make people sympathetic to extreme racial ideologies.

Citizenship, Belonging and Crisis-Induced Returns of Ghanaian Migrants from Cote d’Ivoire

The socio-economic embeddedness of ECOWAS foreign nationals and migrants in Côte d’Ivoire has been amply described. Despite previous episodes of political violence and the somewhat recent anti-immigrant policies, Côte d’Ivoire has served and will continue to serve as a haven for foreign-born populations of ECOWAS nationals and Ivorian-born descendants of foreigners. This paper draws on the notion of citizenship and belonging, and qualitative data gathered through interviews to explore the experiences of returned Ghanaian migrants who were victimised and trapped in a conflict situation in Cote D’Ivoire in 2002-2003 and 2010-2011. The findings show that despite playing a passive role as perpetrators of the violence, Ghanaian migrants experienced harassment, intimidation and physical attacks which in turn contributed to traumatic feelings beyond crisis period. While the notion of citizenship and belonging facilitated migrants’ easy entry to Ghana upon return, they had to navigate multiple challenges including hostile attitudes of militants, rebels and vigilante groups at border checkpoints, extortion of cash and other material possessions. Reintegration and resettlement were further exacerbated due to their experiences. These findings have important implications for emergency responses to situations of migrants being caught up in crisis.

Educators’ Perceptions of Immigration Policy Implications on Their Schools: A Mixed-Methods Exploration

Background/Context: This article draws from a larger study focused on how recent immigration policies have influenced school districts across the United States and how educators have responded to support their immigrant-origin students. Scholars have found that immigration policy powerfully shapes the lives of many immigrant youth in multiple ways. Since the 2016 election, increasingly restrictive immigrant policies have had troubling consequences for immigrant-origin youth and their families. Although researchers have found schools to be crucial contexts for immigrant-origin youth, there is a need for additional research on how educators serving immigrant-origin youth are making sense of recent immigration policies and their implications for schools. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Focusing on data from one school district in Illinois, we explored educators’ perceptions of the implications of immigration policies on their schools along with the factors that influence their perceptions. Our research question was as follows: “What factors influence how educators perceive immigration policy implications on their schools, and how do these factors influence educators’ perceptions?” Research Design: We used an explanatory sequential design in a mixed-methods approach to data collection and analysis. We began the study by collecting and analyzing quantitative data. We then collected and analyzed qualitative data with the intent of explaining and expanding on the quantitative results. We took this two-phased approach because we wanted to see if there were factors that significantly influenced educators’ perceptions of immigration policy implications from a larger data set provided through survey results. Findings/Results: According to the quantitative analysis, White educators in nonteaching roles who had a high sense of responsibility to respond to the political climate were more likely to report an impact of immigration policies and rhetoric in their schools. The qualitative data supported the patterns shown by the regression results and highlighted one more influencing factor not captured by the survey data. Conclusions/Recommendations: This article contributes to research in immigration and education by taking a deeper look at educators’ perceptions of immigration policy implications and the factors affecting those perceptions. In a sociopolitical context with a legacy of anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, it is important to become more aware of educators’ perceptions of immigration because those perceptions greatly influence how educators understand and interact with their immigrant-origin students. Immigrant-origin students need more support in an uncertain and changing policy environment, and as researchers, we must work with practitioners to bring more awareness to how our own perceptions can shape our actions.

Black-Korean Romance: Racially Triangulated Interracial Relationships and Immigrant Narratives in The Sun Is Also a Star

This article navigates Afro-Asian relations and immigration issues through its analysis of the romantic relationship between a Jamaican American immigrant and a second-generation Korean American in Nicola Yoon’s young adult novel The Sun Is Also a Star (2016). My textual analysis of Yoon’s work shows how this novel functions as a counterhegemonic literary project that problematizes systemic racism, anti-immigration policy, prejudice against interracial relationships, and stereotypical images of Asian men and Black women. Because representations of interracial relationships between Black women and Asian men in American culture are still scarce, Yoon’s literary work has social and political implications in need of scholarly attention. Unfortunately, the cinematic adaptation of this novel dismisses its discursive discourse, and the filmic narrative arc reproduces dominant ideologies of race and immigration. My analysis of the novel thus serves to recognize the literary activism of Nicola Yoon, on the one hand, and to critique the hegemonic discourses of the cinematic adaptation on the other.

Symbolic disempowerment and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election: Mental health responses among Latinx and white populations

The 2016 election of United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump was a political event that may have affected population-level mental health. A prominent theme in the Trump election was anti-immigrant policy that contributed to a racist and xenophobic sociopolitical climate. Applying a symbolic dis/empowerment framework, this study examines whether there was an effect of the Trump election on the mental health of the U.S. population that differed by race/ethnicity, language of interview, and state-level support for Trump or Clinton. We used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2011–2018 to examine trends in poor mental health days in the five months after the U.S Presidential election (November 2016 to March 2017) compared to all other survey months. We conducted difference-in-differences analyses using negative binomial regression models to examine the effect of the five post-election months on the rate of poor mental health days, comparing six population categories: 1) non-Latinx white populations in Trump states, 2) non-Latinx white populations in Clinton states, 3) English-speaking Latinx populations in Trump states, 4) English-speaking Latinx populations in Clinton states, 5) Spanish-speaking Latinx populations in Trump states, and 6) Spanish-speaking Latinx populations in Clinton states. White populations in Clinton states reported more poor mental health days in response to the five months post-election period compared to white populations in Trump states. English-speaking Latinx people living in Trump states experienced higher than expected poor mental health days in November 2016 and February 2017. Spanish-speaking Latinx people, by contrast, reported fewer poor mental health days in the post-election period. The 2016 U.S. presidential election preceded population-level changes in mental health that support a symbolic dis/empowerment framework. We discuss possible explanations and the mental health implications for future major political events.

Status, relative deprivation, and moral devaluation of immigrants.

Immigration has been a prominent political issue for decades, but particularly so with rising national populism. To understand current anti-immigration opinion, we turn to the concept of relative deprivation, which, we argue, is fundamentally about entitlement and is at the heart of popular backlash against immigration. Examining the United Kingdom context, we predicted that immigration attitudes would be contingent on immigrant group status, with immigrants from low-status or poorer countries (Poland, India) more likely to be perceived as encroaching on the majority group's entitlements than those from high-status or richer countries (Germany, Australia). We further proposed moral devaluation (dehumanization and distrust) as a novel mechanism (over and above prejudice) underlying the conditional effects of relative deprivation on support for formal (anti-immigration policies) and informal (hate crime) means of immigrant exclusion. A pilot study (n = 245) and cross-sectional survey (n = 490) results supported our main prediction that status matters: participants felt more deprived relative to low- than high-status immigrants, and this predicted stronger support for anti-immigration policies both directly and through higher distrust (but not dehumanization). This research highlights the need to unpack the generic 'immigrant' category and study anti-immigration sentiment in terms of group status and moral devaluation.

International Immigration Policy and Evaluating the impacts of Immigration

Over the past three decades, new anti-immigration policies and laws have issued to address the migration of undocumented and illicit immigrants. Previous study on immigration was conducted to assess and understand how these immigration policies and laws may affect to lot of sectors among undocumented immigrants and among citizens. This article will show a direct relationship between immigration policies and their effects. In addition, as a result of these policies, undocumented immigrants were impacted by mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, uncertain future, poor lifestyle, and unstable economic life. Sometimes international immigration policy has serious limitations, particularly when viewed from an economic perspective. Some shortcomings arise from faulty preliminary design, others from the inability of the system to adapt to changing circumstances. In either case, a disrelish to confront politically tenacious decisions is often a contributing factor to the failure to craft laws that can stand the test of time. We argue that, as a result, some key aspects of international immigration policy are incoherent and mutually incompatible — new policies are often inconsistent with past policies and undermine their goals. Inconsistency makes policies less effective because participants in the immigration system realize that lawmakers face powerful enthusiasm to revise policies at a later date. Policies regarding impermanent visas, unaffiliated immigration, and humanitarian migrants offer examples of laxity and incompatibility. This article proposes key features of an integrated, coherent immigration policy from an economic perspective and how policymakers could better attempt to achieve policy consistency across laws and over time.

“I’ve never cried with a stranger before”: a pedagogy of discomfort, emotion and hope for immigrant justice

While anti-immigrant policy and practices have a long history in the United States, many students are unfamiliar with the historical or current immigration crises. This study explores the challenges of teaching a graduate seminar about immigration and education at a predominantly white university. Five graduate students and their instructor share their reflections from a post-course survey and field notes related to the course’s ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ and experiential learning. The class was moved emotionally, interrupting previous beliefs and shifting attitudes. However, the course fell short of exploring one’s own positionality fully, resulting in unfinished learning about how Whiteness upholds the status quo. The authors argue for a neo-abolitionist pedagogy, one that creates a ‘third space’ to process emotional responses and discuss social positionalities to prevent unproductive feelings of guilt or pity that function to further otherize immigrants.

Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains: A Call for Dignity and Justice

ABSTRACT Since 2001 Australia’s offshore processing regime has turned asylum seekers into one of the country’s main destitute groups. No asylum seeker trying to reach Australia by boat is allowed to settle in the country. If their boat is intercepted by the Australian Navy in Australian waters, they are forced to turn back, or are forcefully transferred and indefinitely held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea until their refuge applications are processed. This article focuses on the testimony of one of these asylum seekers who was held in one of the detention centres on Manus Island: Behrouz Boochani’s memoir No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (2018). It explores the author’s condemnation of the oppressive kyriarchal system on which the Australian detention regime is founded, and his embracement of the environment as a form of resistance against it. Contrary to the pejorative stereotyped images often used by governments and some mainstream media to justify their anti-immigration policies, Boochani’s first-person account reminds us that asylum seekers and refugees are not disposable objects, but active agents who should be treated in a more humane and ethical way all around the world.

Trump’s authoritarian neoliberal governance and the US-Mexican border

ABSTRACT This article considers how US border policy and the rhetorical use of the construction of a border wall between the United States and Mexico expands our understanding of the authoritarian neoliberal reorganization of the state and processes of capitalist accumulation during the Trump Presidency. Our argument makes an important contribution to the literature by examining how Trump's Border Wall project is an advanced mode of authoritarian neoliberalism. To do so, the article focuses on how the border wall, as an unfinished project that has resulted in the Trump administration invoking eminent domain to take property for dubious “public good” uses related to border wall construction, expands, deepens and reinforces notions of political and economic disciplining of border populations including migrants and refugees in particular ways such as through the use of child separation and “Remain in Mexico” policies. The article situates the border wall project within a continuum of using border imaginary not just as a frontier but as a key node within the global economy. This article argues that the construction of the border wall, as a key issue in the political agenda combined with an aggressive anti-immigration policy, has been an effective populist mechanism to further insulate the deepening of a neoliberal agenda.

Formation and Dynamics of Asian Community in Flushing, New York

This paper examines the formation and Dynamics of the Asian community in Flushing and the main activities of the community. Today, Flushing has grown into a representative city of religion and cultural diversity, as evidenced in the early days of urban formation. In the early 20th century, the main members of Flushing became Jews, Italians, and Greeks, turning white middle class residential area. In 1965, the immigration law of the United States changed, opening the door to immigration to Asian countries. Since the 1970s, Flushing has become a typical Asian American town with the arrival of Asian immigrants, including Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Indians. In recent years, as the Korean-Chinese people have flowed into Koreatown and Chinatown, they have formed a space and created a new landscape of the city. The Asian communities in Flushing regularly host traditional festivals and food culture festivals. In particular, the Korean and Chinese communities hold a memorial parade jointly with the traditional holiday, New Year s Day. Through this festival, Asian immigrants recognize cultural differences among them, and strengthen exchanges and communication. Recently, the Trump Administration has seriously undermined the historicity of Flushing, where all diversity is respected, by administrative orders and anti-immigration policies. Especially, psychological anxiety of Hispanics and Asian American immigrants is increasing. Minwkon Center, one of the Flushing Asian Communities, takes Actions for rights protection and political participation of Asian American immigrants including Korean Americans. Overall, the Asian American population in the United States is steadily increasing, but their political influence is relatively low. Therefore, it is necessary to find ways to increase their political power. The Asian community in Flushing should promote exchanges and solidarity among ethnic groups, and develop voter registration and active voting participation campaigns.