Mexican Immigrant Women Research Articles

Patterns of Alcohol Abstinence in Mexican Women Residing in the United States: Effects of Nativity and Duration in the United States.

Explore changes in abstinence rates in Mexican women (MW) residing in the United States based on nativity and time in the United States as an indicator risks for future alcohol-related disorders. A secondary analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey evaluated rates of abstinence between 2000 and 2017. A logistic regression was completed to address the impact of age, years in the United States, sample years. A total of 29,860 MW surveyed over an 18-year period that included those born in and outside the United States. Dependent variable was abstinence status; independent variables included nativity, year of survey, age, years in the United States (if immigrant). Immigrant MW showed higher rates of alcohol abstinence than U.S.-born MW across all years, but regardless of place of birth, fewer MW are abstaining over time. Among immigrant MW, those only in the United States greater than 15 years had a greater risk of becoming a drinker than those in the United States less than 5 years. There are declining rates of alcohol abstinence among MW regardless of immigration status. The lower rate of abstinent MW increases their risk for alcohol-related disorders. Assessing MW's use of alcohol and providing targeted education is essential.

Procuring Health: Experiences of Mexican Immigrant Women in Rural Midwestern Communities.

Thematic analysis was used to analyze interview data from 15 first-generation Mexican immigrant women who resided in two rural Midwestern communities. Ten themes were identified and aligned with four thematic areas of interest ( meaning of being healthy, strategies to promote health, challenges to health, and supports for health). This study provides insights into the complexities and realities faced by Mexican immigrant women, as they strove to obtain optimal health in rural America, and contributes to the growing literature focused on health disparities among ethnic and racial minorities. Implications for research, professional practice, and public policy are discussed. Ethnographic and longitudinal studies that include the perspectives of populations that are difficult to reach such as first-generation Latino immigrant families are needed to further explore the nuances of achieving health in growing, diverse areas of rural America.

Living a Deportation Threat: Anticipatory Stressors Confronted by Undocumented Mexican Immigrant Women

Previous sociological research shows that exposure to stress varies by individuals’ social statuses and is a central mechanism in producing mental health disparities. This line of research suggests that ethnoracial groups are more exposed to racial discrimination, thus negatively impacting their mental health. There has also been a growing literature showing how legal status impacts the mental health of immigrants and their families. However, the sociology of mental health and migration literature has largely remained disparate. This paper bridges these literatures to highlight how living a deportation threat manifests itself as an anticipatory stressor that negatively impacts undocumented Mexican migrant women’s access to resources, social relationships, and social roles. Based on 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with undocumented Mexican immigrant women from Houston, Texas, my findings reveal living a deportation threat is a perpetual anticipatory stressor that intensifies the effects of avoiding authorities, family fragmentation, and economic uncertainty. I argue this anticipatory stressor transforms into a chronic stressor that undocumented Mexican women confront daily. By situating this study within an anti-immigrant social context, it highlights the social processes and mechanisms that exacerbate the stressors undocumented Mexican immigrant women confront.

Factors promoting resilience among Mexican immigrant women in the United States: Applying a positive deviance approach

This research project used a positive deviance approach to identify Mexican immigrant women (MIW) who have experienced great stress and who have positive mental health indicators in order to determine the factors behind their resilience and coping skills. Signposts, strengths and resources contributing to positive mental health are identified and described. The resilience of participants in this study emerged as a very dynamic phenomenon. A series of internal assets helped these women find meaning, purpose and build resilience. Social networks, families, positive attitudes, and purposeful behaviors determine the strengths and well-being of this group. This may be the first exploration of the mental health assets of MIW. Although the purposive sample in the study limits the generalization of its results, the specificity of its population is a clear point of comparison and reference. The study has implications for the design of health promotion interventions with individuals of Mexican shared ancestry.

“Provide All Women a Voice:” A Qualitative Study of First-Generation Mexican Immigrant Women's Experiences with Midwives in the United States

ABSTRACTPrevious research has explored the unique approaches of midwives in providing maternity care, but only limited information is available on how immigrant women experience childbirth with midwives in the United States. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 first-generation Mexican immigrant women and five certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) who cared for them at a public clinic. The mothers described their experiences with CNMs as positive and felt supported in retaining cultural traditions. The CNMs strived to provide culturally competent care by allowing women a voice. The findings reflect the active role that health care professionals can play as immigrants adapt to new sociocultural contexts.

Queer Chisme

This essay examines chisme as a form of feminist knowledge production. Various scholars have theorized gossip as an oral practice of sharing information to affirm and/ or police membership in social groups. Using Josefina López’s play Real Women Have Curves (1996), this essay queers chisme as an antinormative feminist practice, defining it as a culturally specific homosocial form of bonding that reconfigures emotional security beyond the boundaries of heteronormative kinship structures. I begin by exploring the historical and political processes linked to global capitalism, the feminization of labor, and heteronormative US immigration policies, illustrating how these systems of containment discipline Mexican women to specific heteronormative networks of emotional security. I then articulate chisme as a “slippage” of this imposed discipline by theorizing the ways in which chisme deploys its own performative erotic power within global capitalism, allowing immigrant women to create an alternative definition of emotional security that centers community, fights back against patriarchy, and produces feminist knowledge. In this way Mexican immigrant women’s discourses are not only feminist acts but also political countersites of revolutionary love.

Acculturation and Dietary Change in Mexican-American Immigrant Women

Our study explored the process of acculturation among Mexican women living in southwest U.S., and the consequences regarding dietary risk factors associated to health. The cross-sectional study included face to face interviews with 150 migrant women and 150 non-migrant women. Interviews consisted of two non-consecutive 24-hour recalls, and data on anthropometry, acculturation, dietary change and lifestyle. Multiple regression analysis showed that consumption of calories from saturated fat and body mass index (BMI) were significantly higher in migrant women compared to non-migrant women, even after adjusting for other lifestyle and diet related variables. Overall, acculturation seems to be associated with more access to food rather than with a change in consumption of dietary risk components. Furthermore, acculturation was associated positively with socioeconomic status, indicating interplay of socioeconomic and cultural variables related to eating behavior in Mexican immigrant women. Positive association of BMI with acculturation and of acculturation with socioeconomic status suggests that health risk factors among Mexican immigrant women follow similar trends of those of women in their born country.

Genetic ancestry in relation to the metabolic response to a US versus traditional Mexican diet: a randomized crossover feeding trial among women of Mexican descent.

BackgroundCertain populations with a large proportion of Indigenous American (IA) genetic ancestry may be evolutionarily adapted to traditional diets high in legumes and complex carbohydrates, and may have a detrimental metabolic response to U.S. diets high in refined carbohydrates and added sugars. We tested whether IA ancestry modified the metabolic response to a U.S. versus traditional Mexican diet in a controlled dietary intervention.MethodsFirst and second generation Mexican immigrant women (n=53) completed a randomized crossover feeding trial testing the effects of a U.S. versus traditional Mexican diet. The metabolic response to the diets was measured by fasting serum concentrations of glucose, insulin, IGF-1, IGFBP-3, adiponectin, CRP, IL-6, and computed HOMAIR. Blood collected at baseline was used for genotyping and estimation of African, European, and IA ancestries with the use of 214 Ancestry Informative Markers.ResultsThe genetic ancestral background was 56% IA, 38% European, and 6% African. Women in the highest IA ancestry tertile (>62%) were shorter in height, less educated and less acculturated to the U.S. lifestyle, and tended to have higher waist-to-hip ratio compared to women in the middle and lowest IA ancestry tertiles, respectively. Compared to the U.S. diet, the traditional Mexican diet tended to reduce glucose, insulin, IGF-1, IGFBP-3, and HOMAIR among women in the middle IA ancestry group (IA ancestry ≤45–62%); while having no effect on biomarkers related to inflammation.ConclusionsWe observed modest interactions between IA ancestry and the metabolic response to a U.S. versus traditional Mexican diet among Mexican immigrant women.

The Ties that Bind: Mexicana Caretakers and Aging Americans Construct Kinship

AbstractIn this paper, I examine how close care relations, sometimes resulting in kinship, are made between Mexican immigrant women employed as private care providers by aging Anglo‐Americans. This study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Santa Barbara, California, between 2009 and 2011 and focuses on the informal care market. I discuss three case studies, applying insights from the new kinship literature, and I focus on one extended case to show how it reflects and challenges traditional notions of family in the United States. At a time when questions about what constitutes appropriate intimacy in paid care are rife, studies such as this are crucial to better understand the contexts in which other forms of kin relations may be created and solidified.

“Doing the Impossible”

In 1915, the California Commission of Immigration and Housing (CCIH) unveiled a bold new experiment: the Home Teacher Program. In Los Angeles, this program sent volunteers into Mexican communities to teach immigrant women new, more “American” ways of homemaking and childrearing. The lesson plans, sample dialogues, teacher testimonies, and photographs featured in CCIH publications provide a fascinating window on to the tense interactions between home teachers and immigrant women. Scholars have long explored different ways of mining institutional records and other forms of writing by Americanization advocates for insights into the experiences of those who participated in the programs. This essay contributes to the discussion of California's Americanization curricula in two ways: First, I provide a close reading of CCIH texts in order to uncover and analyze three layers of recorded experience: (1) teacher biases confronted by immigrant women; (2) immigrant women's difficult material realities; and (3) immigrant women's complex responses to Americanization. Second, I provide further evidence for the view that Mexican immigrant women responded to Americanization efforts in a variety of ways, from outright resistance to milder forms of pushback and, at times, conditional acceptance of the “American” customs presented to them. In light of the evidence, I argue that Mexican immigrant women were “doing the impossible” by laying claim to a piece of California through the complex relationship they negotiated with the home teachers. Although Americanization programs intended to flatten Mexican women's ethnic affiliations, the immigrant women found subtle ways to assert their agency, survive hardship and prejudice, and forge a new Mexican American ethnic community in the process.

Stress, Pregnancy, and Motherhood: Implications for Birth Weights in the Borderlands of Texas.

We argue that changes over time in how ideas of stress are incorporated into understandings of pregnancy and motherhood among Mexican immigrant women living in the United States may affect the documented increase of low birth weight infants born to those women. Stress has consistently been linked to low birth weight, and pregnant Mexican American and Mexican immigrant women differ in levels of perceived social stress. What is lacking is an explanation for these differences. We utilize a subset of 36 ethnographic interviews with pregnant immigrant women from northern Mexico and Mexican Americans living in south Texas to demonstrate how meanings of pregnancy and motherhood increasingly integrate notions of stress the longer immigrant Mexican women live in the United States. We situate our results within anthropological and sociological research on motherhood in the United States and Mexico, anthropological research in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and interdisciplinary research on Hispanic rates of low birth weight.

Utilization of Standardized Mental Health Assessments in Anthropological Research: Possibilities and Pitfalls.

In the past decade anthropologists working the boundary of culture, medicine, and psychiatry have drawn from ethnographic and epidemiological methods to interdigitate data and provide more depth in understanding critical health problems. But rarely do these studies incorporate psychiatric inventories with ethnographic analysis. This article shows how triangulation of research methods strengthens scholars' ability (1) to draw conclusions from smaller data sets and facilitate comparisons of what suffering means across contexts; (2) to unpack the complexities of ethnographic and narrative data by way of interdigitating narratives with standardized evaluations of psychological distress; and (3) to enhance the translatability of narrative data to interventionists and to make anthropological research more accessible to policymakers. The crux of this argument is based on two discrete case studies, one community sample of Nicaraguan grandmothers in urban Nicaragua, and another clinic-based study of Mexican immigrant women in urban United States, which represent different populations, methodologies, and instruments. Yet, both authors critically examine narrative data and then use the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to further unpack meaning of psychological suffering by analyzing symptomatology. Such integrative methodologies illustrate how incorporating results from standardized mental health assessments can corroborate meaning-making in anthropology while advancing anthropological contributions to mental health treatment and policy.

Con Café, Compañerismo, y Calidad: Latina Women Fashioning a Writing Group into a Space of Praxis and Belonging

ABSTRACTThis article explores the spatial practices through which a group of Mexican immigrant women, participants in a school-based writing workshop I facilitated for four years, molded and gave meaning to our weekly writing routine to foster inclusivity as the basis for collective teaching and learning—creating what I refer to as a space of praxis and belonging. Integrating the insights of Latina feminist ethnography with dialectical and dialogical approaches to spatial production, I consider how workshop participants’ attention to the material, aesthetic, and affective dimensions of the workshop were central to the creation of a space for writing and discussing stories that respected writers’ differences, dignified their life experiences, and encouraged them to consider new ways of envisioning and enacting their lives.

Perceived ethnic and language-based discrimination and Latina immigrant women's health.

Perceiving ethnic discrimination can have aversive consequences for health. However, little is known about whether perceiving language-based (how one speaks a second language) discrimination poses the same risks. This study examined whether perceptions of language-based and ethnic discrimination are associated with mental and physical health. Among 132 Mexican and Dominican immigrant women, perceiving ethnic and language-based discrimination each predicted psychological distress and poorer physical health. When examined together, only ethnic discrimination remained a significant predictor. These results emphasize the importance of understanding how perceived ethnic and language-based discrimination play an integral role in the health of Latina immigrant women.

Somos Hermanas Del Mismo Dolor (We Are Sisters of the Same Pain): Intimate Partner Sexual Violence Narratives Among Mexican Immigrant Women in the United States.

Migration across international borders places tremendous stress on immigrant families and may put women at greater risk for intimate partner violence. In this study, we used narrative analysis methods to explore how nine Mexican immigrant women in the Northeastern United States described their experiences of intimate partner sexual violence, and how these stories were embedded within narratives of transition and movement across borders. We identified three major themes: The Virgin and the Whore, The Family, and Getting Ahead. We share important implications for researchers and health and social service providers working with this population.

Todos Sacrifican: Immigrant Organizing and the Meanings of (Domestic) Work

Domestic service is one of the few available jobs open to Mexican and Central American immigrant women, individuals who have migrated to the US to escape poverty in their home countries. Economic inequalities between countries are mirrored in a growing split within the US, where immigrant women have become the serving classes that sustain the lifestyles of the (native‐born) professional and managerial workforce. In LA, immigrant women often take up domestic work, remaining in jobs where they do not earn enough and experience daily humiliations. In this paper, I examine two groups that seek to mitigate the most abusive aspects of paid domestic employment in Los Angeles. Although they address significant and enduring issues, neither group is entirely successful. I ask how immigrant domestic workers define themselves, their experiences in the United States, and their jobs—and how these understandings affect the functioning of both groups.

Gendered Transborder Violence in the Expanded United States-Mexico Borderlands

The domestic violence experienced by Mexican immigrant women needs to be understood within a larger context of structural violence, which includes criminal and state violence aggravated by their unprotected status in the United States as “immigrant aliens.” Transborder violence refers to forms of violence that cross multiple national, regional, class, ethnic, and state boundaries. This article uses one case of what lawyers call gender-based asylum to demonstrate how structures of transborder violence entrap women. This case represents the kinds of cases I have worked with as an expert witness. What anthropologists learn as expert witnesses provides important information about broader patterns of gendered violence that need to be documented and analyzed. This article is framed by an understanding of the borderlands, including not only the geographic United States-Mexico border but also the broader reach of transborder communities and networks, which span the United States and Mexico. In connecting the tran...

Development of the Stress of Immigration Survey: A Field Test Among Mexican Immigrant Women.

The Stress of Immigration Survey (SOIS) is a screening tool used to assess immigration-related stress. The mixed methods approach included concept development, pretesting, field testing, and psychometric evaluation in a sample of 131 low-income women of Mexican descent. The 21-item SOIS screens for stress related to language, immigrant status, work issues, yearning for family and home country, and cultural dissonance. Mean scores ranged from 3.6 to 4.4 (a scale of 1-5, higher is more stress). Cronbach α values were more than 0.80 for all subscales. The SOIS may be a useful screening tool for detecting high levels of immigration-related stress in low-income Mexican immigrant women.

Essential Qualitative Inquiry in the Development of a Cancer Literacy Measure for Immigrant Women.

In this article, we describe the development of a comprehensive measure of breast and cervical cancer literacy for immigrant populations. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a health literacy framework in this endeavor. Using qualitative strategies, we (a) developed an understanding of the experiences of Mexican and Filipina immigrant women with low health literacy through individual interviews, (b) conducted focus groups to obtain feedback from experts and participants to determine the adequacy of items included in the measure, and (c) refined the set of items to create an empirically based measure. The final measure included 129 items that assess beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, emotions, and contextual factors related to breast and cervical cancer. Processes for adapting the measure for use with other immigrant groups are discussed.

A Longitudinal Study of Cultural Adaptation among Mexican and Dominican Immigrant Women.

The present longitudinal study examined cultural adaptation (i.e., acculturation and enculturation) and its correlates in a sample of 189 Mexican and Dominican immigrant women. Acculturation and enculturation were measured within the domains of language competence, identity and cultural knowledge at two time points over a one-year period. Across groups and domains, cultural adaptation was generally stable over time; only American cultural knowledge showed change, and only for MA women. Several correlates of cultural adaptation were identified. For Mexican women, living in poverty and in immigrant-dense neighborhoods was associated with lower acculturation. For Dominican women, age at immigration was the most robust correlate and was associated with more acculturation and less enculturation, though poverty and neighborhood characteristics emerged as significant for Dominican women too. Findings are consistent with the notion of cultural adaptation as a complex construct that is influenced by cultural context as well as individual immigrant characteristics.