This article introduces the concept of toxic ties to analyze how relationships between documented and undocumented people are impacted by governmental policies that sanction legal violence and unevenly distribute legal rights, protections, and benefits. Toxic ties are relationships in which a documented person abuses, exploits, or demeans his or her undocumented partners, relatives, or friends. Drawing on interviews with undocumented and US-born young adults in southern California, the article shows that as relationships between documented and undocumented people turn toxic, the resulting toxic ties reproduce legal violence in everyday life. Future research should further explore how toxic ties affect migrants’ life outcomes.

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According to the social stress process model, global crises are macro-level stressors that generate physiological stress and psychological distress. However, existing research has not identified immigrants’ COVID-19 containment policy stressors or examined the social stress of sending remittances amid crises. Drawing on in-depth longitudinal interviews with 46 Venezuelan immigrants—half before and half during the pandemic—in Chile and Argentina, we identified the COVID-19 containment policies’ stressors. We focused on Venezuelan immigrants because they constitute one of the largest internationally displaced populations, with most migrating within South America. We found that the governmental COVID-19 containment measures in both countries generated four stressors: employment loss, income loss, devaluation of employment status, and inability to send needed remittances. Moreover, sending remittances helped some migrants cope with concerns about loved ones in Venezuela. However, sending remittances became a social stressor when immigrants struggled to simultaneously sustain their livelihoods and send financial support to relatives experiencing hardships in Venezuela. For some immigrants, these adversities generated other stressors (e.g., housing instability) and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Broadly, for immigrants, the stressors of global crises transcend international borders and generate high stress, which strains their psychological well-being.

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