Gendered effects of a Toxic Environment: Legal Violence and the Health of Latina Immigrants

• In Event: 1564 - Gender and Immigration

Abstract

We investigate the gendered manifestations of the immigration regime on Latina women’s mental and physical well-being. We employ in-depth interviews with 46 immigrant Latina women and draw from two years of ethnographic participant observation in rural and urban Kansas. We find that immigration policies intersect with public health policies to create a toxic environment promoted by the legal violence of immigration law, with harmful consequences for the health of women. This toxicity emerges from immigration enforcement practices as these create a perpetual fear of deportation, limit women’s mobility, create precarious working conditions, and block access to healthcare. Fear deteriorates women’s health; immigration and public health policies impede access to healthcare to address their health concerns. This also impedes women’s fulfillment of gendered expectations by limiting their interactions with social institutions. Thus, the legal violence embedded in the immigration regime has generated a vicious cycle that negatively affects women’s health—by creating a toxic environment for their health and by curtailing access to healthcare. Women respond by turning to their informal networks to access temporary cures for their aliments from friends and family.

Authors

• Andrea Gomez Cervantes, University of Kansas

• Cecilia Menjivar, University of California-Los Angeles