Gains from Green Cards: Immigrant Parents' Legal Status and Children's Scholastic Achievement

Legal Power in Action: How Latinx Adult Children Mitigate the Effects of Parents’ Legal Status through Brokering

Social Problems ◽

10.1093/socpro/spaa027 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Isabel García Valdivia

Keyword(s):

Transition To Adulthood ◽

Adult Children ◽

Legal Status ◽

Extended Family ◽

Immigrant Parents ◽

Access To Credit ◽

Immigration Laws ◽

Legal Power ◽

Mixed Status Families ◽

Mixed Status

Abstract Scholars have long demonstrated that Latinx children engage in cultural and linguistic brokering on behalf of their immigrant parents. This article adds to this literature by examining how the transition to adulthood enables adult children to deploy their legal power to assist their immigrant parents. This study identifies three types of brokering using legal power: securing loans or access to credit, sponsoring immigration petitions, and becoming a legal guardian for siblings. Using 37 in-depth interviews with adult children, parents, and extended family members with varying legal statuses in California, I show that citizen adult children have greater capacity than DACAmented adult children in mixed-status families to exercise legal power when brokering. In addition, adult children’s legal power may be enhanced or limited by incomplete paperwork, family tensions, and economic background. These findings provide an understanding of how the transition to legal adulthood affects the way adult children of immigrants help their undocumented parents access resources and information, negotiate the effects of immigration laws, and reduce some inequality suffered by their families.

Download Full-text

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

International Migration Review ◽

10.1177/0197918320949816 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 019791832094981

Author(s):

Eileen Díaz McConnell ◽

Aggie J Yellow Horse

Keyword(s):

Los Angeles ◽

Family Functioning ◽

Legal Status ◽

Central American ◽

Immigrant Parents ◽

Maternal Knowledge ◽

Family Routines ◽

Family Organization ◽

Immigrant Mothers ◽

The Family

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.

Download Full-text