Undocumented Mexican Immigrants Research Articles

Work and identity in direct selling: meaning from work and exploitation in an undocumented immigrant network

ABSTRACT This article examines the work identities of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the direct selling industry, an alternative work arrangement in which they selling branded products and recruit others to join them as sales consultants. Drawing on qualitative research with undocumented direct sellers in Philadelphia, this research shows that direct selling pays in meaningful work and new identities, rather than in wages. While existing research documents the importance of hard worker identities for undocumented immigrants coping with structural marginality, undocumented direct sellers believe their work offers autonomy, education, and geographic mobility. Ultimately, multi-level marketing companies profit from undocumented workers’ precarity by promising freedom from work and from the struggles of enduring illegality.

Deportations and departures: Undocumented Mexican immigrants’ return migration during three presidential administrations

This study examines changes in the sociodemographic patterns of deportation and voluntary return of undocumented immigrants from the United States to Mexico during three US presidential administrations (2001 to 2019) with different immigration policies. Most previous studies examining these migration flows for the United States as a whole have relied exclusively on counts of deportees and returnees, thereby ignoring changes over the past 20 y in the characteristics of the undocumented population itself, i.e., the population at risk of deportation or voluntary return. We estimate Poisson models based on two data sources that permit us to compare changes in the sex, age, education, and marital status distributions of both deportees and voluntary return migrants with the corresponding changes in the undocumented population during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations: the Migration Survey on the Borders of Mexico-North (Encuesta sobre Migración en las Fronteras de México-Norte) for counts of deportees and voluntary return migrants and the Current Population Survey's Annual Social and Economic Supplement for estimated counts of the undocumented population living in the United States. We find that whereas disparities by sociodemographic characteristics in the likelihood of deportation generally increased beginning in Obama's first term, sociodemographic disparities in the likelihood of voluntary return generally decreased over this period. Despite heightened antiimmigrant rhetoric during the Trump administration, the changes in deportation and voluntary return migration to Mexico among the undocumented during Trump's term were part of a trend that began early in the Obama administration.

Two pathways to Mexico: Forced deportation or voluntary return of parents and US citizen children.

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented Mexican immigrants were deported from the United States or returned to Mexico voluntarily in the past two decades, taking with them their US-born citizen children (USCC). A family's relocation-forced deportation or voluntary return-and the subsequent settlement and adjustment to Mexico affect everyone's well-being. We interviewed 18 USCC whose parents were forcibly deported and 18 whose parents returned voluntarily about their circumstances, experiences, and perceptions. Four categories of relocation and adjustment issues emerged. USCC with deported parents felt the sudden and harsh arrest, detention, deportation, and separation from parents, and family reunification after deportation. Those in the voluntary-return group told of concerns about the planned separation and relocation to Mexico. Both groups experienced issues of family reintegration and adjustment to a new environment. While relocation prompted similarities and differences in families' settlement, issues unique to families played a part in children's adjustment. Clinicians in both the United States and Mexico must take into consideration the nature of the relocation, families' distinctive reactions, and the individual child's experience as some USCC will remain in Mexico and others will return to the US Mexican clinicians will encounter USCC still settling and adjusting to Mexico, and USCC who decide to remain permanently in Mexico. US clinicians may encounter USCC facing the challenges of re-entering American society, joining educational institutions, and becoming part of the labor force. USCC forming families may feel the impact of their pasts in parenting dynamics.

U.S. public perceptions of Mexican immigrants: Effects of immigrant acculturation strategy, documentation status, and gender and participants’ social dominance

Given the salience and rise of anti-immigrant sentiments in the United States, Mexican immigrants who are not integrated into the American cultural system, are undocumented, or are men may be particularly susceptible to negative treatment. Moreover, people who are high in social dominance orientation (SDO) endorse social hierarchies and are more likely to perceive groups from a lower status less positively. Using a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design, we presented participants (N = 243) with a vignette describing a Mexican immigrant who differed on acculturation strategy (assimilated or separated), documentation status (documented or undocumented), and gender (woman or man). We then asked participants to answer questions about the Mexican immigrant and complete an SDO scale. Overall, participants had more negative perceptions of separated (vs. assimilated) and undocumented (vs. documented) Mexican immigrants, and they felt less positively about Mexican immigrant women (vs. men). Participants with high SDO felt more negatively about separated (vs. assimilated) Mexican immigrants. Additionally, participants perceived the separated (vs. assimilated) Mexican immigrant as being more representative of Mexican immigrants as a group, but they identified more with the assimilated (vs. separated) Mexican immigrant. We also assessed participants’ attitudes toward Mexican immigrants in general and found that they perceived greater competitiveness toward undocumented (vs. documented) Mexican immigrants. These findings provide important insight into factors that impact U.S. perceptions of Mexican immigrants—a starting point to better understand and improve relations between the U.S. public and Mexican immigrants.

The Role of Intergroup Threat in Support of Punitive Policies Toward Mexican Immigrants

The present research examined the degree to which symbolic and realistic threat perceptions of documented and undocumented Mexican immigrants predicted support for willingness to provide basic resources (e.g., food, water) in detention centers and agreement with policies that restrict Mexican immigration through detention and deportation. Our study recruited 191 participants online via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Results showed that undocumented immigrants were more realistically, but not symbolically threatening than their documented counterparts. Intergroup threat predicted lower willingness to provide basic resources in detention centers and greater support of punitive policies. This finding was not moderated by whether participants evaluated documented or undocumented immigrants. Once we accounted for social dominance orientation (SDO), political attitudes, and contact with Mexican immigrants, only SDO remained a significant predictor of attitudes toward resources in detention centers, while all variables predicted more support for punitive policies. These findings highlight the roles of symbolic and realistic threats, SDO, political attitudes, and intergroup contact in endorsing punitive immigration policies.

Snapshot Models of Undocumented Immigration

Accurately estimating the size of the undocumented immigrant population is a critical component of assessing the health and security risks of undocumented immigration to the United States. To provide one such estimate, we use data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), a study that includes samples of undocumented Mexican immigrants to the United States after their return to Mexico. Of particular interest are the departure and return dates of a sampled migrant's most recent sojourn in the United States, and the total number of such journeys undertaken by that migrant household, for these data enable the construction of data-driven undocumented immigration models. However, such data are subject to an extreme physical bias, for to be included in such a sample, a migrant must have returned to Mexico by the time of the survey, excluding those undocumented immigrants still in the United States. In our analysis, we account for this bias by jointly modeling trip timing and duration to produce the likelihood of observing the data in such a "snapshot" sample. Our analysis characterizes undocumented migration flows including single-visit migrants, repeat visitors, and "retirement" from circular migration. Starting with 1987, we apply our models to 30 annual random snapshot surveys of returned undocumented Mexican migrants accounting for undocumented Mexican migration from 1980 to 2016. Scaling to population quantities and supplementing our analysis of southern border crossings with estimates of visa overstays, we produce lower bounds on the total number of undocumented immigrants that are much larger than conventional estimates based on U.S.-based census-linked surveys, and broadly consistent with the more recent estimates reported by Fazel-Zarandi, Feinstein, and Kaplan.

Undocumented, not Unengaged: Local Immigration Laws and the Shaping of Undocumented Mexicans’ Political Engagement

Abstractcholars have long demonstrated that laws convey messages to people about how government views them and that these messages impact targeted groups’ political behavior. Drawing from this insight, this study asks if and how local immigration laws shape the political lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants in US cities. The article advances a tripartite theory of political engagement to demonstrate that the design of local immigration measures impacts the political socialization, political efficacy, and political participation of immigrant communities on the ground. This multidimensional model contributes a more holistic account of undocumented immigrants’ political engagement than is available in the existing literature. With a matched case comparison of undocumented life in cities with divergent immigration laws, the article shows that local opportunity structures embedded within receiving locales profoundly influence the nature of political engagement for undocumented residents.

Artificial Intelligence and Predicting Illegal Immigration to the USA

AbstractThe number of Mexican immigrants in the USA tripled between 1990 and 2015. In 2015, about 12 million undocumented immigrants lived in the USA, including 6.6 million undocumented Mexican immigrants. More than half of the undocumented immigrants in the USA enter the USA legally and overstay their visas. Therefore, it is essential to predict whether visa applicants overstay their visas or not. We use a set of pre‐immigration variables for more than 6,281 individuals from Mexico to predict their legal status in the USA. By using eight machine learning techniques, we conclude that we can predict correctly the legal status of 80 per cent of Mexicans who migrate to the USA.

“A high price paid”: Migration-related loss and distress among undocumented Mexican immigrants.

“A high price paid”: Migration-related loss and distress among undocumented Mexican immigrants.

Do Co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods protect children with undocumented parents? Focusing on child behavioral functioning

Undocumented immigrants concentrate in ethnic enclaves, but little is known about the implications of living in such neighborhoods for children of undocumented immigrants. Using data on Mexican-origin children from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey and the decennial census, this paper examines the influence of co-ethnic concentrated neighborhoods on children's behavioral functioning, and the extent to which parental nativity and documentation status moderate the neighborhood effects. Multilevel linear regression models show that the proportion of co-ethnics in the neighborhood apparently has no influence on Mexican-origin children. However, cross-level interactions reveal that the neighborhood context has differential effects by parental documentation status. The higher the percentage of co-ethnics in the neighborhood, the lower (better) the externalizing scores for children of undocumented immigrants, a pattern not observed for children of US-born or documented parents. The mechanism through which co-ethnic enclaves benefit children of undocumented Mexican immigrants deserves future research.

Homesickness and repeated migration

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a dynamic structural model of migration that is designed to help explain the migration behaviour of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US. Its key feature – which I call ‘homesickness’ – is a duration-dependent disutility from living abroad that keeps increasing while a migrant stays abroad and can be reset to zero only by returning to their home country. I estimate the model using data primarily from the Mexican Migration Project Survey and find that the model is capable of explaining, among other things, the fact that: (i) a non-negligible number of Mexican immigrants in the US return home after earning very little; (ii) these ‘unsuccessful’ immigrants are more likely to re-enter the US at a later date; and (iii) such ‘unsuccessful’ returns are more prevalent among immigrants who left their wives behind in Mexico. These facts are not easily reconciled with existing models of migration that do not feature homesickness.

Miles over mind: Transnational death and its association with psychological distress among undocumented Mexican immigrants

Objective: This study examined the association between transnational death and psychological distress among undocumented Mexican immigrants. The Minority Stress Model and a disenfranchised grief perspective were used as frameworks for this study.Method: Respondent driven sampling (RDS) was used to collect data from clinical interviews with 248 undocumented Mexican immigrants residing near the US–Mexico border.Results: After controlling for relevant covariates, experiencing transnational death was a significant predictor of clinically significant distress in this at-risk population.Conclusions: Our findings underscore the need to contextualize transnational death among undocumented immigrants from a perspective of disenfranchised grief that requires the development of contextually and culturally sensitive interventions aimed at addressing the high prevalence of transnational death and its associated distress in this marginalized population.

They Should Stay There: The Story of Mexican Migration and Repatriation during the Great Depression by Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso

Reviewed by: They Should Stay There: The Story of Mexican Migration and Repatriation during the Great Depression by Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso Yolanda Valencia Fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso, translated by Russ Davidson. They Should Stay There: The Story of Mexican Migration and Repatriation during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017. 272 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 paper (978-1-4696-3426-5); $90.00 cloth (978-1-4696-3425-8); $19.99 electronic (978-1-4696-3427-2). In they should stay there, fernando Saúl Alanís Enciso documents Mexico's social, political, and economic conditions and examines Mexican migrants' lives and struggles in the United States through a unique transnational historical analysis of the repatriation of Mexican immigrants during the Great Depression. At its heart, the book argues that the Mexican government has never fully supported its citizens who migrated (and continue to migrate) to the US. Although the perception was that they were actively supporting and encouraging repatriation during the Great Depression, in reality the Mexican government desired (and continues to prefer) for out-migrants to stay there, in the United States. Lázaro Cardenas (president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940) and earlier Mexican presidents had, in fact, created a series of repatriation programs, but these programs did not succeed. Only a few of such programs were implemented, and those targeted a limited number of people who the state perceived as more skilled to modernize the nation. The Mexican government also lacked the technology, tools, and economic resources to support what programs were implemented. In its meticulous documentation of the historical context of this time period, They Should Stay There makes some significant contributions to the history of Mexico-US migration. Chapter 1 especially provides an invaluable history of the beginnings of migration from Mexico to the United States prior to the Great Depression, with particular attention to how and why this migration began. This text is an excellent complement to other works that analyze labor, development, and migration in relation to politics and the economy on either side of the US-Mexico border. From a US point of view, Joe Nevins's Operation Gatekeeper (2002) highlights historical events that propelled recruitment for Mexican labor (during a shortage of labor produced by wars, [End Page 192] for instance) and deportation from the US (during high unemployment resulting from economic crisis) and the production and reinforcement of the US-Mexico border. Kitty Calabita's Inside the State (1992) shows how the US government -- in support of US agrarian employers – participated in recruiting and racializing Mexican labor, whether through the Bracero Program or support for hiring undocumented Mexican immigrants. Both of these books provide a deep analytical context to the US government's participation in taking advantage of Mexicans' labor and disposing of this labor via deportation practices when it is no longer needed. Alanís Enciso contributes to this conversation a political (and economic) historical context about Mexico's government involvement in pushing people to migrate and preventing many from retuning. Alanís Enciso's work also complements Guillermo Bonfil Batalla's Mexico Profundo (1996), by demonstrating how Western ideologies of modernity propelled the Mexican government to implement de-Indianizing practices during the Porfiriato (the presidency of Porfirio Diaz) and beyond. Out-migration to the United States was framed as an opportunity to learn and modernize and thus was encouraged as a part of these de-Indianizing efforts. Then, after a failure to successfully industrialize according to the model of the West, out-migration became a survival strategy (Bonfil Batalla, 1996). However, the authors I have mentioned give a one-nation perspective only. As such, Alanís Enciso's contribution makes for a more nuanced understanding of politics across borders and their effects on Mexican populations. Reading this book raised a series of questions for me—some organizational and some related to the substantive politics of returning Mexican immigrants. At moments it was challenging to follow the narrative and arc of the argument; some of the chapters are organized around periods of time, others around themes, and others have a mixture of both...

Kicks Hurt Less: Discrimination Predicts Distress Beyond Trauma among Undocumented Mexican Immigrants.

This study aimed to assess for the prevalence of interpersonal discrimination among undocumented Mexican immigrants residing in high-risk neighborhoods near the CaliforniaMexico border, identify relevant vulnerabilities, and determine its association with clinically significant psychological distress after controlling for socio-demographics, immigration characteristics, and history of trauma. Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) was used in this cross-sectional study to collect and analyze data from clinical interviews with 246 undocumented Mexican immigrants. The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI-53) was used as the primary outcome measure to assess for clinically significant psychological distress. For all analyses, inferential statistics accounted for design effects and sample weights to produce weighted estimates. Logistic regression was used in the multivariate analyses. 69% of participants reported interpersonal discrimination due to being undocumented with significant differences observed across sex, educational attainment, and income. Among participants with a history of interpersonal discrimination due to their undocumented status, 52% met criteria for clinically significant psychological distress with significant differences observed across age groups, years living in the U.S. and history of trauma. After controlling for relevant covariates, having experienced interpersonal discrimination due to being undocumented was the strongest significant predictor of clinically significant psychological distress, OR = 5.47, 95% CI [2.56, 11.7], p < .001, even beyond history of trauma. Overall, our findings emphasize the need for policies, advocacy, and the development and provision of contextually-sensitive interventions to address the high prevalence of interpersonal discrimination and its negative health effects among undocumented Mexican immigrants.

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.

End-of-Life Care for an Undocumented Mexican Immigrant: Resident Perspective.

The immigrant population in the United States has grown over the past years. Undocumented immigrants account for 14.6% of the uninsured population in the United States. Decisions about end-of-life treatment are often difficult to reach in the best of situations. We present a 43-year-old undocumented Mexican female immigrant with metastatic sarcomatoid squamous cell cervical cancer and discuss the barriers that she faced during her treatment. Limited English proficiency, living below the poverty line, low level of education, and lack access to Medicare, Medicaid, or other insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act are major causes of decreased health-care access and service utilization by the immigrant population. Latinos are less likely to be referred to hospice by oncologists, and nearly a third of hospice agencies offer limited or no services to undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants with terminal diagnoses generally do not have access to comprehensive or multidisciplinary follow-up treatment. Instead, one of their few options is to return to their home countries without any long-term treatment. This article discusses the many barriers and proposes areas for reform.

Factors Influencing Physician Assistant Students' Attitudes Toward Deservingness of Care for Undocumented Mexicans.

Attitudes regarding health-related deservingness of care for vulnerable patient populations can impact the quality of services provided. This study was aimed at identifying the influences that shape these attitudes among physician assistant (PA) students. The study focused on PA students' perspectives toward care for a particularly vulnerable population, undocumented Mexican immigrants. An in-person survey was administered to first- and second-year PA students (n = 75). Multiple regression was used to assess whether familiarity, stereotyping, language skills, cultural preparedness, societal views, and background characteristics of PA students influenced attitudes toward deservingness of care. Results suggested that cultural preparedness among PA students was associated with positive views toward deservingness of both emergency services (β = 0.38, p < .001) and primary care (β = -0.211, p = .05) for undocumented Mexicans. Negative societal views toward this population predicted an unwillingness to endorse emergency care (β = -0.43, p < .001) and primary care (β = -0.45, p < .001). Demographic projections indicate continued trends toward increasingly diverse patient populations, with dramatic growth among Hispanics. The findings of this study suggest that greater cultural preparedness is needed for future PAs. Furthermore, strategies for increasing PA students' self-awareness of how their broader societal views shape service delivery are warranted to ensure equitable care.

Craniofacial asymmetry as a marker of socioeconomic status among undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States

This study examines levels of fluctuating asymmetry (FA) in Mexican residents, U.S. residents, and undocumented border crossers (UBCs) from Mexico to the United States. Craniofacial structures develop symmetrically under ideal circumstances; however, during periods of developmental stress random deviations from perfect symmetry, or FA, can occur. It is hypothesized that the UBC sample would represent individuals of a lower socioeconomic status (SES) who experienced higher stress levels during development, and that these individuals would consequently have higher levels of FA. Three-dimensional cranial landmarks were collected from 509 individuals representing the three resident groups. Geometric morphometric methods were used to calculate an FA score for each individual. The FA score provides a distance measure that is a scalar measure of the magnitude of FA in each individual. The results show that the difference in the means of the FA scores between UBCs and U.S. residents is 0.43 (p = 0.02), with UBCs showing significantly higher levels of FA compared to U.S. residents. Moreover, Mexican residents’ FA levels are intermediate between and not significantly different from the other two samples. These results suggest that levels of FA may prove useful for reconstructing individuals’ social and economic circumstances, and that craniofacial asymmetry provides a suitable biological marker for analyzing differences in SES among different groups.

"One Scar Too Many:" The Associations Between Traumatic Events and Psychological Distress Among Undocumented Mexican Immigrants.

Undocumented immigration often presents with multiple stressors and contextual challenges, which may diminish mental health. This study is the first to provide population-based estimates for the prevalence of traumatic events and its association to clinically significant psychological distress among undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States. This cross-sectional study used respondent-driven sampling to obtain and analyze data from clinical interviews with 248 undocumented Mexican immigrants residing in high-risk neighborhoods near the California-Mexico border. Overall, 82.7% of participants reported a history of traumatic events, with 47.0% of these meeting the criteria for clinically significant psychological distress. After controlling for relevant covariates, having experienced material deprivation, odds ratio (OR) = 2.26, 95% CI [1.18, 4.31], p = .013, and bodily injury, OR = 2.96, 95% CI [1.50, 5.83], p = .002, and not having a history of deportation, OR = 0.36, 95% CI [0.17, 0.79], p = .011, were associated with clinically significant psychological distress. These results support the need to revisit health and immigration policies and to devise solutions grounded in empirical evidence aimed at preventing the negative effects of trauma and psychological distress in this population.

Mental disorders among undocumented Mexican immigrants in high-risk neighborhoods: Prevalence, comorbidity, and vulnerabilities.

This study aimed to: (a) provide population-based estimates for the prevalence of mental disorders, including substance use, among undocumented Mexican immigrants; (b) assess for relevant comorbidities; and (c) identify sociodemographic, immigration and contextual vulnerabilities associated with meeting criteria for a disorder. This cross-sectional study used Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) to collect and analyze data from clinical interviews with 248 undocumented Mexican immigrants residing near the California-Mexico border. The M.I.N.I. Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview was used as the primary outcome of interest. For all analyses, inferential statistics accounted for design effects and sample weights to produce weighted estimates. Logistic regression was used in multivariate analyses. Overall, 23% of participants met criteria for a disorder (95% CI = 17.1; 29.0). The most prevalent disorders were Major Depressive Disorder (14%, 95% CI = 10.2; 18.6), Panic Disorder (8%, 95% CI = 5.0; 11.9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (7%, 95% CI = 3.4; 9.8). Approximately 4% of participants met criteria for a substance use disorder (95% CI = 1.2; 6.1). After controlling for covariates, being 18 to 25 years and experiencing distress from postmigration living difficulties were significantly associated with meeting criteria for a disorder. Undocumented Mexican immigrants are an at-risk population for mental disorders, particularly depression and anxiety disorders. Given that distress from postmigration living difficulties is associated with meeting criteria for a disorder, revisiting policies and developing new alternatives to facilitate access and provision of context-sensitive mental health services for this population is necessary to protect the human rights of these immigrants and that of their U.S. families. (PsycINFO Database Record