The Death Brokers: How Latinx Immigrant Families Navigate Sudden Loss and Grief

• In Event: 21061 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Mapping and Building Communities

Abstract

How do immigrant families navigate sudden and traumatic loss? Between 2020 and 2022, Latinxs were the ethnoracial minority group that had the highest death rate in America due to COVID-19. The sudden loss of Latinx life was so stark that journalists decried the pandemic had wiped out a generation. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant family members who experienced the death of a loved one, I argue that when a loved one is dying and subsequently passes away, immigrant children primarily, and sometimes other family members—usually when there is no second-generation immigrant child present—become what I term the death brokers, intermediaries that step up to do the logistical and emotional work that comes with dying. As the loved one is dying and eventually dies, they not only translate what is being said by the medical team—either verbatim or simplifying complex medical information—but also help decide what the best steps to take vis-à-vis their loved one’s prognosis and post-mortem plans as they often bear the burden of becoming an informal health care proxy (i.e. the decision maker). This death broker role often induces ambivalence in adult immigrant children: some feel honored to help their family, and others lament the burden the role takes and the tensions that can arise for family members as loved ones are collectively trying to decide on post-mortem plans. Nonetheless, the death broker role allows immigrant children and, by extension, their family members whom they broker for, an attempt to honor their loved one’s death when institutions and society fail to do so. This research highlights the need for medical personnel and death professionals to better support immigrant families navigating the sudden and traumatic death of a loved one.

Author

• Julio Fernando Salas, University of California-Berkeley