Words hurt: Political rhetoric, emotions/affect, and psychological well-being among Mexican-origin youth (original) (raw)

Trump-induced anxiety among Latina/os

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2019

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump castigated unauthorized immigrants as “murderers and rapists.” During his presidency, he continued the use of this rhetoric, explicitly linking unauthorized migrants to threatening narratives. Here, we consider three questions: Did Donald Trump and his immigration positions serve as an “anxiety trigger” for Latina/os? Are individuals with contextually stigmatized attributes especially sensitive to Trump and his policy proposals? Is Spanish language itself, an attribute negatively stigmatized in the context of the immigration issue, sufficient to increase deportation anxiety? Utilizing survey experiments of Latina/os, we demonstrate that exposure to a Trump immigration cue is sufficient to increase anxiety about deportation. We also demonstrate that stigmatized attributes predict anxiety, but do not moderate the effect of the Trump cue. Lastly, we provide evidence that survey language affects anxiety among Latina/os. In Studies 1 ( n = 736) and ...

Del Real, Deisy Mexican Illegality Stigma Stress AdvancesinMedSoc

“They see us like Trash”: How Mexican illegality Stigma Affects the Psychological Well-being of Undocumented and US-Born Young Adults of Mexican Descent, 2019

There is a conflation of Mexican origin with the category “undocumented immigrant” that targets and stigmatizes undocumented Mexicans—I call this Mexican illegality stigma. I assess whether Mexican illegality stigma negatively affects the psychological well-being of Mexican-Origin individuals in the U.S., distinguishing between undocumented Mexicans and citizen Mexican Americans. I draw from the stress process model and 52 in-depth interviews—30 with undocumented young adults from Mexico and 22 with U.S.-born young adults of Mexican descent—to evaluate how undocumented Mexicans and citizen Mexican Americans experience Mexican illegality stigma and to determine if it affects the psychological well-being of undocumented Mexicans in a distinct manner. I found that all respondents experienced social rejection and discrimination when they were assumed or perceived as undocumented Mexicans. While few of the U.S.-born respondents were affected by these incidents, most undocumented young adults found these incidents stressful because they were humiliating, excluded them from valuable resources and opportunities, and forced them to incur financial burden (e.g., unfair fines), which disrupted their transition to adulthood processes such as parenthood and labor market advancement. This study found evidence that Mexican illegality stigma is a stressor and source of distress for undocumented young adults from Mexico. As opposition to undocumented immigration from Mexico intensifies, the hostile context may further strain the psychological well-being of undocumented Mexicans. Keywords: Mexican illegality stigma, undocumented immigrants, racializing illegality, stressors, psychological well-being, Racialization, Distress

Latino Resentimiento: Emotions and Critique of Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Latino Political Rhetoric

Aztlan, 2021

Resentment in anti-immigrant and anti-Latino political rhetoric often focuses on perceived demographic changes, white population decline, and economic decline. Resentimiento, by contrast, connotes disgust and anger at mistreatment through hostile words or acts such as those conveyed in negative political rhetoric. To explore the nature of resentimiento, Mexican-origin students at a California university were shown samples of negative (N = 95) or positive (N = 93) statements and visual images about immigrants and Latinos. Their written responses to the negative rhetoric included anger and sadness, feelings of being stigmatized, and bodily reactions. Participants argued that the negative rhetoric suffered from overgeneralizations, racism, and misinformation, and that it failed acknowledge why people migrate, the valiant struggles of families to secure a better life, and the contributions of Latinos and immigrants to US society. The students recast the negative rhetoric as a flawed and inadequate source of repre-sentation and knowledge about them, their families, and their communities. They denied the rhetoric’s epistemological efficacy while at the same time recognizing the emotional toll of being its target.

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co-Ethnics

American Journal of Political Science, 2014

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native-born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti-immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high-identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high-identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.

Impact of anti‐immigrant rhetoric and policies on frontline health and social service providers in Southeast Michigan, U.S.A

Health & Social Care in the Community, 2020

Rising hostility towards immigrants characterised the 2016 Presidential election in the United States (US) and subsequent policy priorities by the new presidential administration. The political shift towards aggressive policies targeting undocumented immigrants is far-reaching and extends into other communities that convive con-or coexist with-immigrant communities. Our study aims to examine the rippling effects of these anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric on health and social service providers in Southeast Michigan who predominantly serve Latino immigrants. Between April and August 2018, we conducted in-depth individual interviews in two Federally Qualified Health Centers and a non-profit social service agency at a county health department. We interviewed 28 frontline health and social service providers. After coding and thematic analyses, we found that staff members' experiences in supporting immigrant clients was congruent with definitions of secondary trauma stress and compassion fatigue, whereby exposure to clients' trauma combined with job burden subsequently impacted the mental health of providers. Major themes included: (a) frontline staff experienced a mental and emotional burden in providing services to immigrant clients given the restrictive anti-immigrant context; and (b) this burden was exacerbated by the increased difficulties in providing these services to their clients. Staff described psychological and emotional distress stemming from exposure to clients' immigration-related trauma and increased mental health needs. This distress was exacerbated by an increased demand to meet clients' needs, which involved explaining or translating documents into English, assisting with legal paperwork, referring clients to mental health resources, addressing increased transportation barriers, and reestablishing trust with the community. Our findings add qualitative data on the mental health implications for frontline providers who support Latino immigrant clients impacted by immigration and highlights the need for further research and resources that address the workplace-related stress generated by heightened immigration enforcement.

Online negative sentiment towards Mexicans and Hispanics and impact on mental well-being: A time-series analysis of social media data during the 2016 United States presidential election

Heliyon, 2020

The purpose was to use Twitter to conduct online surveillance of negative sentiment towards Mexicans and Hispanics during the 2016 United States presidential election, and to examine its relationship with mental well-being in this targeted group at the population level. Methods: Tweets containing the terms Mexican(s) and Hispanic(s) were collected within a 20-week period of the 2016 United States presidential election (November 9th 2016). Sentiment analysis was used to capture percent negative tweets. A time series lag regression model was used to examine the association between percent count of negative tweets mentioning Mexicans and Hispanics and percent count of worry among Hispanic Gallup poll respondents. Results: Of 2,809,641 tweets containing terms Mexican(s) and Hispanic(s), 687,291 tweets were negative. Among 8,314 Hispanic Gallup respondents, a mean of 33.5% responded to be worried on a daily basis. A significant lead time of 1 week was observed, showing that negative tweets mentioning Mexicans and Hispanics appeared to forecast daily worry among Hispanics by 1 week. Conclusion: Surveillance of online negative sentiment towards racially vulnerable population groups can be captured using social media. This has potential to identify early warning signals for symptoms of mental wellbeing among targeted groups at the population level.

Cultural stress in the age of mass xenophobia: Perspectives from Latin/o adolescents

International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2021

During the last four years, xenophobic rhetoric directed toward Latino immigrants in U.S. media outlets and political forums has greatly increased. Using a general inductive approach, this qualitative study examined the forms of cultural stress, with a focus on discrimination and xenophobia, experienced by Latino adolescents in urban U.S. settings in 2018 and 2019. Six focus groups were conducted in Miami and Los Angeles (three groups per city) with first-and secondgeneration tenth-grade Latino students (n = 34). The following four themes emerged from the data: perceived discrimination from other Latino subgroups (in-group discrimination), perceived discrimination from non-Latino groups (out-group discrimination), internalization of stressors and discrimination experienced by participants' parents, and the current U.S. political rhetoric surrounding immigration. Understanding cultural stress among Latino adolescents provides valuable insight for future interventions to offset negative health outcomes associated with cultural stress.

Immigration, Mental Health and Psychosocial Well-being

Medical Anthropology, 2021

Anthropological approaches to "immigrant mental health" as an object of ethnographic inquiry can illuminate how psychosocial well-being-or decline-and the therapeutic realm of mental health is always enacted by a variety of institutions and social actors. The ways that mental health is understood and approached across different geographical and social settings are constitutive of a range of cultural meanings, norms, and social relations. The authors in this special section provide crucial insights into the landscape of immigrant mental health and how the experience of multiple exclusions influences collective psychosocial well-being. They also illustrate the extent to which narratives shape the production of knowledge around immigration and health, engendering direct effects on public policy, social imaginaries, and community health. Future research in the anthropology of immigration and mental health will need to further elucidate the structural underpinnings and racial capitalist origins of psychosocial decline. KEYWORDS Immigration; immigrants; mental health; psychosocial well-being Concern over the psychosocial well-being of minoritized populations, particularly people migrating from the Global South to the Global North and their descendants, continues to intensify as nationalist and populist discourses have become more prevalent in global politics in recent years and heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The political and social articulation of contemporary populist attitudes overlap with and echo much of the rhetoric that has historically been deployed to deem migrants and immigrants unworthy of formal belonging. Incendiary words and phrases such as "unfit" and "undesirable", that we often associate with poor physical or mental health status of individuals, communities, and entire societies, are reminiscent of the language used by nativists and ethno-nationalists in the early 20th century against various ethnic and religious minoritized populations. Further, such public and political constructions of migrants and immigrants specifically as "illegitimate" and "unwanted" social groups have been utilized to justify policies, processes, and institutional mandates that exclude these groups and hinder their social, economic, and linguistic integration. Researchers have long attended to broad forms of exclusion-political, economic, social-that engender feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression among immigrant populations, both in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Anthropologists, in particular, have utilized the notion of "structural vulnerability" to describe the embodiment of these dynamics of exclusion and how complex forces-ranging from economic exploitation, political marginalization, social discrimination-lead to immigrants' physical and emotional suffering, including the internalization of individual and collective unworthiness (Haines 2013; Heyman 1998; Quesada et al. 2011). Others have used the framing of "abjectivity" to describe the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of worthlessness and precarity that accompany immigrants' experiences of non-belonging, xenophobia, and social marginalization (Gonzales and Chavez 2012; Willen 2007). These broad forms of exclusion, when encountered over CONTACT Thurka Sangaramoorthy

Association of Perceived Immigration Policy Vulnerability With Mental and Physical Health Among US-Born Latino Adolescents in California

JAMA Pediatrics, 2019

IMPORTANCE Current US immigration policy targets immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries; anti-immigration rhetoric has possible implications for the US-born children of immigrant parents. OBJECTIVE To assess whether concerns about immigration policy are associated with worse mental and physical health among US citizen children of Latino immigrants. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This study of cohort data from the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a long-term study of Mexican farmworker families in the Salinas Valley region of California, included a sample of US-born adolescents (n = 397) with at least 1 immigrant parent. These adolescents underwent a health assessment before the 2016 presidential election (at age 14 years) and in the first year after the election (at age 16 years). Data were analyzed from March 23, 2018, to February 14, 2019. EXPOSURES Adolescents aged 16 years self-reported their concern about immigration policy using 2 subscales (Threat to Family and Children's Vulnerability) of the Perceived Immigration Policy Effects Scale (PIPES) instrument. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Resting systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure; body mass index; maternal-and self-reported depression and anxiety problems (using Behavioral Assessment System for Children, 2nd edition); self-reported sleep quality (using Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]); and maternal rating of child's overall health. All measures except sleep quality were assessed at both the aged-14-years and aged-16-years visits. Health outcomes at age 16 years and the change in outcomes between ages 14 and 16 years were examined among youth participants who reported low or moderate PIPES scores vs high PIPES scores. RESULTS In the sample of 397 US-born Latino adolescents (207 [52.1%] female) and primarily Mexican American individuals, nearly half of the youth participants worried at least sometimes about the personal consequences of the US immigration policy (n = 178 [44.8%]), family separation because of deportation (177 [44.6%]), and being reported to the immigration office (164 [41.3%]). Those with high compared with low or moderate PIPES scores had higher self-reported mean anxiety T scores (5.43; 95% CI, 2.64-8.23), higher maternally reported anxiety T scores (2.98; 95% CI, 0.53-5.44), and worse PSQI scores (0.98; 95% CI, 0.36-1.59). Youth participants with high PIPES scores reported statistically significantly increased levels of anxiety over the 2 visits (adjusted mean difference-indifferences, 2.91; 95% CI, 0.20-5.61) and not significantly increased levels of depression (adjusted mean difference-indifferences , 2.63; 95% CI,-0.28 to 5.54). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Fear and worry about the personal consequences of current US immigration policy and rhetoric appear to be associated with higher anxiety levels, sleep problems, and blood pressure changes among US-born Latino adolescents; anxiety significantly increased after the 2016 presidential election.