Vulnerable and Resilient: Legal Status, Sources of Support, Maternal Knowledge, and the Family Routines of Mexican and Central American-origin Mothers in Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
pp. 019791832094981
Author(s):  
Eileen Díaz McConnell ◽  
Aggie J Yellow Horse

How do unauthorized immigrant parents promote family functioning to navigate challenging conditions and contexts in the United States? This article offers the first quantitative analyses contrasting the family organization and maternal knowledge of Mexican and Central-American immigrant mothers by legal status. Using Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey data with a sample of mothers of school-aged children, the analyses investigate whether mothers’ documentation status, origin country/region, and access to social and instrumental support are associated with the frequency of family dinners, the consistency of family routines, and the knowledge of their child’s associations and friendships. Relative to their US-born and documented Mexican immigrant counterparts, undocumented Mexican immigrant mothers have as many or more frequent family dinners, more predictable family routines, and the same level of knowledge about whom their child is with when not at home. Whom mothers can rely on for emergency childcare and financial support also is linked with both family organization and levels of maternal knowledge about their child. More quantitative research is needed about how undocumented immigrant parents actively employ different family functioning strategies to promote strengths and resiliency in their lives in the midst of challenging contexts driven by lack of legal status.

Kids at Work ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Emir Estrada

Chapter 5 underlines how gender shapes the way this study's girls and boys experience this occupation and how the children and the families create gendered expectations as well as strategies for protection. While both boys and girls work alongside their parents on the street, findings revealed that the daughters of Mexican and Central American street vendors in Los Angeles are more active than the sons in street vending with the family. How do we explain this paradox? A gendered analysis helps explain why girls are compelled into street vending, while boys are allowed to withdraw or minimize their participation. This chapter extends the feminist literature on intersectionality by exploring the world of Latinx teenage street vendors from a perspective that takes into account gendered expectations not only resulting from the familiar intersecting relations of race, class, and gender, but also as a consequence of age as well as of the inequality of nations that gives rise to particular patterns of international labor migration.


1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Harway ◽  
◽  
Nancy Boyd-Franklin ◽  
Robert Geffner ◽  
Marsali Hansen ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Booysen ◽  
Ferdi Botha ◽  
Edwin Wouters

AbstractSocial determinants of health frameworks are standard tools in public health. These frameworks for the most part omit a crucial factor: the family. Socioeconomic status moreover is a prominent social determinant of health. Insofar as family functioning is poorer in poor families and family structure and functioning are linked to health, it is critical to consider the pathways between these four constructs. In this correspondence, we reflect on how empirical studies of this conceptual nexus mirror two causal models. We conclude by reflecting on future directions for research in this field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 306-319
Author(s):  
Colleen K. Vesely ◽  
Elizabeth K. DeMulder ◽  
Amber B. Sansbury ◽  
Elizabeth F. Davis ◽  
Bethany L. Letiecq ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124322110292
Author(s):  
Sahar Shakiba ◽  
Omid Ghaderzadeh ◽  
Valentine M. Moghadam

Informed by sociological standpoint, intersectional, and gender regime theories, we examine perceptions of a diverse sample of Iranian Kurdish women in the city of Sanandaj about their legal status and social positions. We find perceptions of injustice, oppression, male control, and lack of opportunity associated with both the family and broader society. Kurdish women are socially located in structures and institutions of both private and public patriarchy. At the same time, their growing educational attainment and knowledge of possibilities for change enable them not only to articulate grievances but also to aspire to, and sometimes engage in, collective action for women’s rights. By focusing on an under-studied region, this article contributes to the wider literature on Kurdish women, underscores the continued salience of intersectional and standpoint approaches, and expands gender regime theorizing beyond Western cases.


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