The Punishment/El Castigo: Undocumented Latinos and US Immigration Processing

Gomberg‐Muñoz, Ruth

doi:10.1080/1369183x.2015.1056118

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Although a longer duration of residence in the U.S. (e.g., 20 years or more) can lead to obtaining citizenship and eventually living with vertical kin, this will not happen in the case of undocumented immigrants, for whom it is extremely difficult to change their status (Gilbertson & Gurak, 1992;Glick, 1999;Gomberg-Muñoz, 2015). Indeed, compared with US-born individuals, Latinx immigrants are less likely to have vertical kin and more likely to have horizontal kin in their home (Blank & Torrecilha, 1998;Glick et al, 1997;Landale et al, 2011).…”

Section: Parental Immigrant Status Child Behavioral Problems and Exmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latinx Families’ Extended Household Structures and Child Behavioral Problems across Mother’s Immigrant Status in Los Angeles

Kang¹,

Cohen

Chen³

2020

Preprint

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Using the panel samples from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS), this paper examined the associations of extended household structures—the entry, stay, and exit of grandparents (vertical kin) and other extended adults (horizontal kin)—with child behavioral problems across US-born, documented and undocumented Latinx families. Difference-score regression models showed differential associations of extended kin by different types of transitions. For children of US-born Latina mothers, gaining grandparents was associated with higher (worse) levels of internalizing (i.e. withdrawn) behaviors, whereas losing grandparents was associated with lower (better) levels of internalizing and externalizing (i.e. disobedient) behaviors. For children of documented Latina mothers, gaining grandparents had no effect, but losing grandparents and keeping horizontal kin were associated with lower levels of internalizing behaviors. For children of undocumented Latina mothers, gaining grandparents was associated with higher levels of externalizing behaviors, but keeping grandparents was associated with lower levels of internalizing behaviors, and keeping horizontal kin was associated with lower levels of both internalizing and externalizing behaviors. The association between the household transition of extended kin and children's behavior reflects selection rather than causation in the context of family life course and US immigration policy.

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Section: Parental Immigrant Status Child Behavioral Problems and Exmentioning

confidence: 99%

Latinx Families’ Extended Household Structures and Child Behavioral Problems across Mother’s Immigrant Status in Los Angeles

Kang¹,

Cohen

Chen³

2020

Preprint

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“…Because federal prosecutions for immigration violations are concentrated on the US‐Mexico border (Light, Lopez, and Gonzalez‐Barrera ) and discriminatory policing practices in the US interior target Latinos (Kohli, Markowitz, and Chavez ), Latin American immigrants are widely conflated with “criminal aliens” and overrepresented among US deportees (Dowling and Inda ; Golash‐Boza and Hondagneu‐Sotelo ). Their criminalization manifests not only in enforcement measures but also in higher hurdles to lawful status, since Latin Americans are more likely to be unlawful entrants than undocumented people from elsewhere in the world and are more likely to have immigration‐related criminal convictions on their record (Coutin ; Gomberg‐Muñoz ; Pew Hispanic Center ).…”

Section: The Legal Nonexistence Of Undocumented Entrantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This work challenges the notion that there is a clean and unambiguous division between legal inclusion and exclusion and, instead, has attended to the “gap” (Reeves , 509), “gray area” (Menjívar , 1000), or “fuzzy spaces” (Menjívar and Kanstroom , 11) that lie within and between them. This gap is most evident in temporary, flexible, and ambiguous legal statuses (Menjívar ; Ong ), practices that uphold differentiations within a status (Fassin ; Gomberg‐Muñoz ; Heyman ; Holston ), and political actions through which undocumented people demand and win recognition and rights (Coutin ; Gonzales ; Redclift ; Unzueta Carrasco and Seif ; Zlolniski ). This nuance allows us to perceive the interactive and contested nature of immigration politics (Redclift ), as well as the lived experiences of marginalized people whose lives are not so much “bare” as interconnected, meaningful, and complex.…”

Section: The Law and The Gapmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Juárez Wives Club: Gendered citizenship and US immigration law

Gomberg‐Muñoz

2016

American Ethnologist

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When US citizens sponsor their undocumented spouses for lawful status, they find themselves at the center of immigration petitions. They are invasively scrutinized, treated with bureaucratic indifference, and separated from their loved ones. As this “politics of exception,” which often targets migrants, is unleashed on US citizens, they learn that their citizenship offers little protection from dehumanizing treatment. Instead, restrictive immigration criteria, designed in theory to boost the value of US citizenship, in practice dehumanize US citizens and can alienate them from feelings of national belonging. This contradiction inevitably emerges when shared lives disrupt the boundaries of citizenship status, illuminating inconsistencies in normative conceptions of citizenship itself. [mixed‐status families, immigration law, gendered citizenship, legal exception, United States] Cuando los ciudadanos estadounidenses piden para sus cónyuges indocumentados un cambio de estatus legal, caen en el ámbito de los procedimientos de inmigración. Se les examina de forma invasiva, se les trata con indiferencia burocrática y se les separa de sus seres queridos. Cuando esa “política de excepción”, que normalmente se dirige en contra de los inmigrantes, se aplica a los ciudadanos estadounidenses, estos aprenden que su ciudadanía no les protege de tratos inhumanos. De hecho, los criterios restrictivos de inmigración, diseñados en teoría para aumentar el valor de su ciudadanía, en la práctica les deshumanizan y pueden hacer que se sientan despojados de sentimientos de pertenencia nacional. Esta contradicción surge inevitablemente cuando las vidas compartidas traspasan las fronteras del estatus de ciudadanía, poniendo al descubierto las incoherencias en las concepciones normativas de la ciudadanía misma. [familias de estatus mixto, ley de inmigración, género y ciudadanía, excepción legal, Estados Unidos]

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“…Currently, some 11 million people live in the United States without legal authorization; about 75 percent of them are of Latin American origin (Passel and Cohn ). There are multiple and complex reasons for this, including persistent demand for immigrant labor without corresponding pathways to legal entry (Golash‐Boza ), obstacles that make it impossible for most undocumented people to change their status even after many years of residence and family ties in the U.S. (Gomberg‐Muñoz ), and severe economic crises in Latin America following the proliferation of free trade agreements with the United States (Delgado Wise and Cypher ). In recent years, their lives in the US have been besieged by dehumanizing rhetoric and accelerated enforcement measures that target them in their homes and families.…”

Section: Two Million Too Manymentioning

confidence: 99%