The increasing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers reaching the U.S.–Mexico border since 2014 has strained local nonprofit organizations helping them. Lack of material and human resources along with uncertain policy implementation by the government generates frustration and burnout among caregivers working in local nonprofits. Nonetheless, turnover as a result of burnout is surprisingly low. To answer why so few caregivers make efforts to help migrants and asylum seekers on the border, I analyze how caregivers respond to burnout in this resource-scarce context. I find that caregivers practice what I call detached attachment, the process of physically and emotionally distancing oneself from care work, while maintaining a cognitive attachment to it. Caregivers seek space to process their negative emotions and manage their relationships with care recipients to reduce intensity, while also reflecting on their normative attachments to the work. Paradoxically, then, the negative experience of burnout ends up renewing caregivers’ commitment to the immigrant rights movement. This article highlights the significance of everyday practices of care in sustaining social movement participation.

Social movement scholars acknowledge the importance of morality in joining and shaping social movements. There is less knowledge about the content of morality that keeps social movement participants committed, once in. Moral commitments, I argue, emerge from the work conducted within social movements. By looking at everyday activities in the immigrant rights movement in El Paso, Texas, I analyze how commitment is shaped through the caregiving practices of staff and volunteers within two organizations serving immigrants and asylum seekers on the border: Compromiso and Casa Asuncion. Despite the strenuous work involved, I find care givers in these two organizations make sense of their continued participation by drawing on what I call familial moralities. At Compromiso, a legal aid office, caregivers reflect on their or others’ immigrant family histories, creating an intellectual attachment to the work through family. At Casa Asuncion, a migrant shelter, caregivers draw on new familial roles with migrants and the shelter staff, creating an emotional attachment as family.

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