239 10 3355 https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/91/2953/10.2307_community.12229785-1.jpg c30d4cdb863d67809a30b8e71ab166de Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women's History 2022 Subject The topic of the resource Women's History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ally Green, Kelsey Parker, Paisley Hou Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Green, Ally Hou, Paisley Parker, Kelsey Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helen O. Storrow, seated, right, with three unidentified women of the World Committee. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource unknown Subject The topic of the resource Storrow, Helen Osborne, 1864-1944 World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts of the United States of America Group portraits Women women women's studies American photo archives women's rights feminism history Description An account of the resource Inscription: Verso: {Mrs. Storrow as Chairman of the World Committee}, wife of Storrow, James Jackson, 1864-1926 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource n.d. (circa 1928-1935) Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Medium: non-projected black and white photograph Dimensions: 8.125x10 in. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photograph Number: MC263-147-5, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University), Data From: The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection, Folder Number: 147, Fo Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant ||||osm 1928 -- 1935 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This image has been made available by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University solely for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes. Your use of this image is restricted to those permitted uses specified in the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use (http://www.artstor.org/info/about/terms_conditions.jsp). To request permission for any other use, please contact the Schlesinger Library at slref@radcliffe.edu. https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/91/2952/10.2307_community.12230886-1.jpg 018ab95c7d04a3f5062fb18a9bb8eda9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women's History 2022 Subject The topic of the resource Women's History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ally Green, Kelsey Parker, Paisley Hou Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Green, Ally Hou, Paisley Parker, Kelsey Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helen O. Storrow and her dog sitting by a lake, probably Long Pond, Pine Tree Camp. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource unknown Subject The topic of the resource Storrow, Helen Osborne, 1864-1944 Animals Pets Ponds Women women women's studies American photo archives women's rights feminism history Description An account of the resource Inscription: Caption: Two friends [in a different hand:] Mrs. Storrow and dog., wife of Storrow, James Jackson, 1864-1926 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource n.d. (circa 1919-1928) Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Medium: non-projected black and white photograph mounted Dimensions: 4.25x3.5 in. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photograph Number: MC263-143-6, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University), Data From: The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection, Folder Number: 143, Fo Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant ||||osm 1919 -- 1928 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This image has been made available by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University solely for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes. Your use of this image is restricted to those permitted uses specified in the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use (http://www.artstor.org/info/about/terms_conditions.jsp). To request permission for any other use, please contact the Schlesinger Library at slref@radcliffe.edu. https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/91/2951/10.2307_community.12252832-1.jpg 7fa1a0b75bc96ddcf264802c3289991b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women's History 2022 Subject The topic of the resource Women's History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ally Green, Kelsey Parker, Paisley Hou Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Green, Ally Hou, Paisley Parker, Kelsey Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helen O. Storrow and a Brownie sitting on a log bench with a dog, possibly at Cedar Hill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource unknown Subject The topic of the resource Storrow, Helen Osborne, 1864-1944 Massachusetts Girl Scouts Animals Benches Children Children's clothing Clothing and dress Group portraits Pets Uniforms Women women women's studies American photo archives women's rights feminism history Description An account of the resource Inscription: Verso: {Storrow and Brownie at camp}, wife of Storrow, James Jackson, 1864-1926 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource n.d. (circa 1917-1925) Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Medium: non-projected black and white photograph Dimensions: 8.125x10 in. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Photograph Number: MC263-147-8, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University), Data From: The Schlesinger History of Women in America Collection, Folder Number: 147, Folder Title: Photographs: Group Photographs originally filed together with list'1 photograph HOS after receiving award of the Silver Fish; 1 photograph HOS with Chief Guide (Lady Baden-Powell) and 2 unidentified others; 1 photograph HOS with Anny Hyde Choate and dog, "Mr. Eephys"; 1 photograph HOS with Juliette Low; 1 photograph HOS as Chairman with 3 leaders on World Committee; 1 photograph HOS and others, in costume, at Morris Dance Festival, Cedar Hill (HOS as the hobbyhorse); 1 photograph HOS and ABH; 1 photograph HOS, Brownie, and dog on camp bench. Pine Tree Camp, ca. 1920, Collection Number: MC263, Collection Name: Massachusetts Girl Scouts, Collection Title: Records, 1915-1967 (inclusive) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant ||||osm 1917 -- 1925 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This image has been made available by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University solely for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes. Your use of this image is restricted to those permitted uses specified in the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use (http://www.artstor.org/info/about/terms_conditions.jsp). To request permission for any other use, please contact the Schlesinger Library at slref@radcliffe.edu. https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/91/2950/10.2307_community.12231707-1.jpg 8842cbd10d6060dc521c765b25eb5d9a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women's History 2022 Subject The topic of the resource Women's History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ally Green, Kelsey Parker, Paisley Hou Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Green, Ally Hou, Paisley Parker, Kelsey Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Helen O. Storrow, wearing a lei, with Girl Scout troops in Hawaii. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource unknown Subject The topic of the resource Girl Scouts of the United States of America Exterior views Group portraits Leis School buildings School children Teenagers Women women women's studies American photo archives women's rights feminism history Description An account of the resource Inscription: [See individual photos for captions.], Inscription: Caption: Girlscouts at Ewa[?] Plantation School Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource n.d. (circa 1934-1935) Type The nature or genre of the resource image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Medium: non-projected black and white photograph mounted Dimensions: 6.5x4.5 in. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Mrs. Storrow's trip around the world. Australia, Hawaii [disassembled album], Photograph Number: MC263-145-7, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University), Data From: Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This image has been made available by the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University solely for noncommercial educational and scholarly purposes. Your use of this image is restricted to those permitted uses specified in the ARTstor Digital Library Terms and Conditions of Use (http://www.artstor.org/info/about/terms_conditions.jsp). To request permission for any other use, please contact the Schlesinger Library at slref@radcliffe.edu. https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/93/2947/BLM_Demands.PNG 97c1d8868e1ed4c5effbb278056c1de6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource California History - 2022 Subject The topic of the resource California History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rania Ansari, Cooper Safon, Derek Schmitz, Jashan Kaeley, Ed Roa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Black Lives Matter Demands Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Black Lives Matter Subject The topic of the resource Black Power BLM Description An account of the resource A list of BLM's 7 demands taken from their website. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Black Lives Matter Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/93/2946/california_pic.jpg 610b06c8866536c0f1723768e8b5a0c8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource California History - 2022 Subject The topic of the resource California History Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rania Ansari, Cooper Safon, Derek Schmitz, Jashan Kaeley, Ed Roa Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource California graphic print Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Schiller, David Subject The topic of the resource California Description An account of the resource a graphic print of the state of California Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sparta Graphics Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/86/2945/ballila.jpg 6b31707fc9690d530bff36bbcc0174b2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource B is for Balilla - Content Description An account of the resource Fascist Alphabet Book Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1936 Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Italia All'A alla Z Language A language of the resource Italian Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fraschetti, Vincenzo Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Officine Dell'istituto Geografico De Agostini Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Immigration Act of 1917 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States Government Subject The topic of the resource Immigration Law Legal Documents Description An account of the resource Presents the text of the Immigration Act of 1917, which regulated immigration of aliens to the United States. Definitions used in the Act; Prohibitions settled upon those seeking admittance; Prohibitions against indentured service. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Great Neck Publishing EBSCO Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1917* (original) 2017–8–1* (source published online) Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource HTML Text Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived https://login.libproxy.scu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=prh&AN=21213137&site=eds-live Language A language of the resource English https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/90/2943/Pdhistory_source2.pdf 65131ab1cf0ea07fb95c37ad27db3b01 PDF Text Text Exploring the Effects of U.S. Immigration Enforcement on the Well-being of Citizen Children in Mexican Immigrant Families Author(s): Lauren E. Gulbas and Luis H. Zayas Source: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences , July 2017, Vol. 3, No. 4, Undocumented Immigrants and Their Experience with Illegality (July 2017), pp. 53-69 Published by: Russell Sage Foundation Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.4.04 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.4.04?seq=1&cid=pdfreference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Russell Sage Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �Exploring the Effects of U.S. Immigration Enforcement on the Well-being of Citizen Children in Mexican Immigrant Families l au r en e. gulba s a n d luis h. z aya s In this article, we draw on ecocultural theories of risk and resilience to examine qualitatively the experiences of U.S. citizen children living with their undocumented Mexican parents. Our purpose is to render visible the various ways in which citizen children confront and navigate the possibilities—and realities—of parental deportation. We develop a framework to conceptualize the complex multidimensional, and often multidirectional, factors experienced by citizen children vulnerable to or directly facing parental deportation. We situate youth well-being against a backdrop of multiple factors to understand how indirect and direct encounters with immigration enforcement, the mixed-status family niche, and access to resources shape diﬀerential child outcomes. In doing so, we oﬀer insights into how diﬀerent factors potentially contribute to resilience in the face of adversity. Keywords: children, citizenship, deportation, undocumented, well-being An estimated 4.5 million U.S. citizen children live in families in which one or both parents are undocumented (Pew Hispanic Research Center 2013). Researchers are just beginning to understand the ripple eﬀects of immigration enforcement policies on immigrant families, and particularly on those families whose members have diﬀerent authorizations, or mixedstatus families (Dreby 2013). Given escalations in punitive measures that target undocumented individuals in the United States (Peutz and De Genova 2010), a growing number of citizen children face the harsh realities associated with parental deportation: forced family separations, material deprivation, anxiety, and depression (Gonzales and Chavez 2012; Zayas 2015). Citizen children living in Mexican immigrant families experience a disproportionate burden of risk because the sociopolitical practices aimed at policing migrant illegality increasingly target those of Mexican origin (Dreby 2012). Lauren E. Gulbas is an anthropologist and assistant professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Austin. Luis H. Zayas is professor, endowed chair, and dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Texas, Austin. © 2017 Russell Sage Foundation. Gulbas, Lauren E., and Luis H. Zayas. 2017. “Exploring the Effects of U.S. Immigration Enforcement on the Well-being of Citizen Children in Mexican Immigrant Families.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 3(4): 53–69. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2017.3.4.04. Support for this research was provided by National Institute for Child Health and Human Development grant HD068874 to Luis H. Zayas. We express our gratitude to the families who participated in this study. Direct correspondence to: Lauren E. Gulbas at laurengulbas@austin.utexas.edu, School of Social Work, University of Texas, 1925 San Jacinto Blvd., D3500, Austin, TX 78712; and Luis H. Zayas at lzayas@austin.utexas.edu, School of Social Work, University of Texas, 1925 San Jacinto Blvd., D3500, Austin, TX 78712. This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �54 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y To date, research has highlighted the various ways in which immigration enforcement practices increase the likelihood that citizen children will experience academic challenges, physical and mental health problems, and cognitive and developmental delays (CavazosRehg, Zayas, and Spitznagel 2007; Kersey, Geppert, and Cutts 2007; Perreira and Ornelas 2011; Potochnik and Perreira 2010; SuárezOrozco and Yoshikawa 2013; Yoshikawa 2011; Zayas and Bradlee 2015). Although this research has drawn much-needed attention to the multilevel risk proﬁles of citizen children, the predominant focus on risk has led to generalized assumptions about the vulnerability of this population and overshadowed the evaluation of citizen children’s strengths, agency, and capacity (Panter-Brick 2014). This speaks, in part, to the political nature of research on undocumented individuals and their families. Most research, for good reason, advocates for changes to current immigration laws because studies have been able to demonstrate the negative eﬀects such laws have on citizen children in immigrant families. However, research that focuses attention solely on issues of risk obscures the ways in which citizen children actively navigate stressful situations. Attention to processes of resilience would oﬀer a valuable complement to the literature. In this article, we draw on ecocultural theories of risk and resilience to examine qualitatively the experiences of citizen children living with their undocumented Mexican parents (Unger et al. 2013; Weisner 2010). We focus attention on how citizen children cope within the context of current immigration enforcement and deportation policies. In doing so, we identify factors that shape the well-being of citizen children and highlight the contextual circumstances that have the potential to produce variable individual outcomes. Our paper is framed to address the following research questions: What are the eﬀects of immigration enforcement on the well-being of citizen children? How do citizen children cope with the fears associated with having an undocumented parent? What strengths do citizen children draw on as they face the reali- ties—and consequences—of parental deportation? A N EC O C U LT U R A L P E R S P EC T I V E O N R E S I LI E N C E I N M I X E D - S TAT U S FA M I LI E S Over the past decade, social scientists have turned their attention to resilience-based research to counter the dominant focus on vulnerability, victimization, and suﬀering. Whereas studies of risk attend to circumstances and behaviors that increase the likelihood of negative outcomes, resiliency approaches emphasize elements and processes that sustain or promote well-being. As the anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick notes, studies of resilience “uncover how people manage to live their lives and make the best of dire circumstances” (2014, 439). In such eﬀorts, resiliency-oriented research can identify crucial leverage points that facilitate successful coping and shape well-being. Studies of resilience draw on a range of theoretical approaches that emphasize, to diﬀerent degrees, the salience of individual factors and the broader context. Many social scientists consider Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to be foundational for understanding how interactions between individuals and their contextual environment shape childhood development (Bronfenbrenner 1979; Ungar, Ghazinour, and Richter 2013). Bronfenbrenner posits that proximal processes—those direct interactions between children and their immediate social and material environments (microlevel)—are the basic elements shaping development (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 1998). Broader ecological systems, such as the mesosystem (interaction between microsystems) and macrosystem (broader cultural and structural context) were understood as both shaping and being shaped by interactions in the microsystems (Bronfenbrenner 1993). In this way, change within one system could reverberate across systems. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach has inﬂuenced studies of risk and resilience by focusing attention to micro-, meso-, and macrolevel factors that inhibit or facilitate wellbeing (Ungar, Ghazinour, and Richter 2013). r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t Building on Bronfenbrenner’s model, anthropologists and sociologists have reconceptualized the role of culture within his ecodevelopmental framework, critiquing the distal role that he presumed culture to play in the lives of children and their families. As the sociologist Jonathan Tudge argues, “what is missing is that there is no sense . . . that cultural groups with values, beliefs, lifestyles, and patterns of social interchange diﬀerent from those found in North American middleclass communities would necessarily value different types of proximal processes” (2008, 72– 73). Eco- developmental approaches have drawn little attention to the signiﬁcant ways in which cultural processes directly shape childhood experiences and outcomes. Such a limitation is particularly relevant for studies of citizen children, whose experiences are invariably aﬀected by macro-level contexts that mandate discrepant treatment and access to resources based on ethnicity and citizenship status. In light of this, our paper adopts an ecocultural approach that prioritizes attention to culture, or the everyday activities, routines, and behaviors that children enact within their surrounding environment (Super and Harkness 1986; Trudge 2008; Weisner 2010; Worthman 2010). Ecocultural theory emphasizes the importance of family practices and strategies that families pursue to facilitate child development and well-being (Weisner 2002). As the anthropologist Thomas Weisner notes, families everywhere need to construct and sustain family practices that foster survival, create meaning, and ensure positive outcomes for their children (2010). Yet not all family practices are equally eﬀective or achievable. Even though families actively construct practices, features in the surrounding environment are also an inﬂuence. These inﬂuences include material and institutional resources, health and safety characteristics of the home and community environment, expectations about the division of household and economic labor, informal and formal systems of support, and sources of cultural inﬂuence. Accordingly, family practices reﬂect a negotiation between opportunities and constraints in the sur- 55 rounding environment and the cultural scripts that families draw on to organize and give meaning to everyday life and promote childhood well-being. The nexus of culture, environmental factors, and everyday family life is constituted in the family niche (Weisner 2002, 2010). We extend an ecocultural conceptualization of the family niche to highlight the unique circumstances facing mixed-status families. A mixed-status family niche reﬂects both the micro-environment families create as they balance their needs and the daily challenges associated with having an undocumented family member. Crucial to understanding the mixed-status family niche is what we call a “cultural script of silence.” As Genevieve Negrón- Gonzales notes, “silence is a fundamental part of the undocumented experience in this country . . . [because] the potential consequences of discovery are so severe” (2014, 271). Drawing on the notion of a cultural script of silence, we analyze the ways in which citizen children interpret, manage, and navigate everyday life. Citizen children’s daily lives are organized around the very real possibility that their undocumented parents could one day be detained and deported. In this context, developmental tasks take on new meaning when a knock on the family’s door has the potential to signal a shift in the safety and integrity of the family and the beginning of a terrifying ordeal of parental detention and deportation. Our purpose is to render visible the various ways in which citizen children confront and navigate the possibilities—and realities—of parental deportation, in order to identify factors that potentially contribute to resilience in the face of adversity. In doing so, we highlight those factors that potentially distinguish citizen children from their peers in citizen families. METHODS Data analyzed were drawn from a mixedmethod, multisited binational study that examined the psychosocial functioning of citizen children with undocumented Mexican parents. Study sites included Austin, Texas; Sacramento, California; and several locations r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �56 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Citizen Children in Study Sample Accompanied Parent to Mexico (n = 31) Characteristic M (SD) Age n (percent) 11.1 (1.9) Living in United States with Undocumented Parent (n = 34) Remained in United States (n = 18) M (SD) n (percent) 11.7 (1.8) M (SD) n (percent) 11.6 (1.9) Total (n = 83) M (SD) n (percent) 11.4 (1.9) Gender (girl) 19 (61.3) 11 (61.1) 20 (58.8) 50 (60.2) School enrollment (yes) 30 (96.8) 18 (100) 34 (100) 82 (98.8) Living arrangement Both parents One parent No parent 20 (64.5) 10 (32.3) 1 (3.2) 10 (55.6) 8 (44.4) 0 (0.0) 26 (76.5) 7 (20.6) 1 (2.9) 56 (67.5) 25 (30.1) 2 (2.4) Source: Authors’ compilation. throughout Mexico (Distrito Federal, Hidalgo, Michoacán, Oaxaca, and Sinaloa). The sampling strategy entailed recruitment of three groups of U.S. citizen children between eight and fourteen years old with at least one undocumented Mexican parent: those who had accompanied their deported parents to Mexico; who stayed in the United States with a parent or guardian after one or both parents underwent deportation proceedings, had been deported to Mexico, or returned to the United States following deportation to Mexico; and whose undocumented parents had never been detained by immigration enforcement. Potential participants were excluded if they did not fall within the targeted age range or were living in foster care or child welfare at the time of the study. Additional exclusionary criteria included a diagnosis of psychiatric disorder or cognitive or developmental disability because these present unique challenges that might shape the well-being of citizen children. Recruitment was carried out with the help of staﬀ at local community agencies at each site. After identifying potential participants who met criteria for participation, agency staﬀ discussed the study with parents. Parents who expressed interest were referred to the research team. All parents and children provided consent and assent for their participation, and in- stitutional review board approval was granted at each of the institutions and sites where research activities took place. Participants Table 1 presents the demographic characteristics of citizen children recruited for participation. Of the total eighty-three participants, thirty-one accompanied their deported parent or parents to Mexico, eighteen remained in the United States after their parent or parents were deported, and thirty-four were not directly affected by deportation at the time of the interview. Across participant subgroups, the majority were girls (60.2 percent). Nearly all participants were enrolled in school and living with both parents at the time interview. Data Collection In-depth interviews were conducted with citizen children to elicit their narratives about living with parents who were undocumented, and, when applicable, to gather detailed accounts of their perceptions and experiences with immigration enforcement and parental deportation. All interviewers were bilingual, and the majority were Mexican or Mexican American women pursuing graduate degrees in the social sciences and trained to conduct qualitative interviews with children. Each in- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t terviewer conducted the interview in the language the participant preferred; approximately 42 percent of the interviews were in Spanish. To help reduce interviewer bias across multiple research sites, the research team constructed a semistructured interview guide to provide a series of probes and prompts to facilitate deeper exploration of topics. Questions were open-ended to capture how citizen children communicated, gave meaning to, and constructed their experiences and perceptions (Ochs and Capps 1996). The interview was conducted in a way that simulated a casual and everyday conversation; to faciliate rapport, interviewers encouraged children to ask questions and provide feedback about the interview process. Interviews began with a “grand tour” question to explore participants’ perceptions about home and family life, including descriptions of family activities and relationships, the child’s roles and responsibilities within the family, and social life outside the home (Spradley 1979). These questions set the stage for a discussion about direct and indirect experiences with immigration enforcement or parental deportation. Interviewers focused on eliciting what the child remembered as meaningful, placing particular emphasis on having children describe their perceptions, thoughts, emotions, feelings, reﬂections, and interpretations to ascertain the psychosocial impact of parental removal or having an undocumented parent. If applicable, children were asked to reﬂect on how their life had changed as a result of the deportation. Throughout qualitative data collection, several procedures were followed to monitor and enhance the data quality. All interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in the language of the interview to enhance validity (Guest and MacQueen 2008). Interview transcripts and notes were systematically reviewed, and a series of debrieﬁng meetings were held with research team members to discuss the rigors of the data collection process (Mack, Bunce, and Akumatey 2008). Data Analysis Transcripts were analyzed using a thematic approach to identify and describe participant perspectives (Guest, MacQueen, and Namey 2012). 57 To develop the coding framework, the ﬁrst author and a graduate research assistant independently read two interviews, recording their initial interpretations of text. Emergent themes were discussed in a team meeting, and a draft of a codebook was developed from this discussion. Additional interviews were read to test the utility of preliminary themes, with attention directed toward the emergence of new themes. After eight interviews had been read, themes in the codebook appeared to be well established and a ﬁnal draft of the codebook was produced. To test the utility of the codebook and establish intercoder reliability, four interviews were uploaded into NVivo9, independently coded by the ﬁrst author and the research assistant, and percent agreement was calculated using the coding comparison module. Text that fell below a 75 percent threshold was discussed during a team meeting, and the codebook was revised as necessary (Miles and Huberman 1994). Interviews were subsequently coded using NVivo9, ﬁrst by the research assistant, and then by the ﬁrst author. This approach facilitated the transparency of the coders’ interpretations of the data by reviewing and monitoring all coded text. After data coding was completed, a framework matrix was generated in NVivo9. A framework matrix organizes data by themes (columns) and participants (rows). Each cell of the matrix contained reduced data in the form of direct quotes and summarized information about the manifestation of a given theme in a particular case. The matrix was then exported and converted to a text document that contained the reduced and summarized information pertaining to each speciﬁc participant, or case. To protect against bias in the interpretation of the cases, a panel of thirteen experts reviewed the data to compare the experiences of citizen children across cognitive, emotional, psychological, cultural, and socioeconomic dimensions. The panel included clinical psychologists and social workers in Mexico and the United States, each of whom had expertise in the mental health and cultural issues that Latino youth and their families experience. Each panelist evaluated a random selection of twenty cases to ensure that each case was re- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �58 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y Figure 1. Framework for Understanding Effects of Immigration Enforcement on Citizen Child Outcomes The Political Economy of U.S. Immigration Policy Distribution of Resources (for example, housing, employment, schooling, physical and mental healthcare, immigration resources, social support, community solidarity) Mixed-Status Family Niche Parent Characteristics Immigration Enforcement Fear ● Arrest ● Detention Deportation ● Separation Relocation Family Characteristics • Structure • Family roles and expectations • Dynamics and relationships • Personal roles and expectations • Internal/psychological resources • Gender • Substance abuse, trauma • Education, language • Legal status Cultural Script of Silence • Communication • Stressors • Legal status • Family and cultural history Citizen Child Characteristics • Personal roles and expectations • Internal/psychological resources • Gender, age, developmental level • Substance abuse, trauma • Education, language • Legal status Child Outcomes Negative . . . . . . . . . . Positive • Mental, emotional status • Levels of stress • Social/material well-being • Sense of identity, belonging • Academic performance Source: Authors’ compilation. viewed by multiple panelists. The panelists were brought together, by telephone in Mexico and in person in the United States, to discuss the results of their analysis. Their discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to develop a list of all the issues that citizen children face and the contextual factors that exacerbated or ameliorated their direct and indirect experiences with immigration enforcement. The list originally contained 339 items, which were organized into sixty-one categories, each of which was linked to the interview data by annotating which cases corresponded to a given category. The research team then reviewed and discussed the arrangement of items and speciﬁcation of categories and revised them accordingly. The list of categories was ﬁnalized by consensus and a framework developed to capture the diﬀerential eﬀects of immigration enforcement on the well-being of citizen children. The framework was revised and ﬁnalized through an iterative team process (see Sobo 2009). R E S U LT S In ﬁgure 1, we oﬀer a framework to describe the varied circumstances facing citizen children to conceptualize the range of eﬀects immigration policies have on the well-being of U.S. citizen children. Figure 1 illustrates the interrelationships among ﬁve categories that emerged as salient to the perspectives of citizen children: immigration enforcement, the cultural script of silence, the distribution of resources, the mixed-status family niche, and child outcomes. Variations in child outcomes, as experienced and narrated by citizen children, depended strongly on the particular processes and characteristics in place within speciﬁc contexts. We begin with a description of the script of silence, followed by an exploration of the ways in which citizen children drew on the cultural script of silence to navigate the various personal, social, and material ecologies that characterized their lives in their eﬀorts to cope with and adapt to situations beyond their control. To contextualize the framework, we present accounts of U.S. citizen children, in their own words. All names are pseudonyms. T H E C U LT U R A L S C R I P T O F S I LE N C E As illustrated in ﬁgure 1, the cultural script of silence emerges within a speciﬁc context: the enforcement of U.S. immigration policies. Given the potential for an act of immigration enforcement to rupture family ties, most children perceived encounters with immigration enforcement as the worst event that could be- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t fall a family. Encounters could be indirect— through the potential threat of parental deportation or knowing others who had been deported—or direct—through the arrest, detention, and deportation of a parent. The condition of illegality, which rendered a parent’s deportation possible, created and maintained a context ripe for the development of a cultural script of silence. Nearly every citizen child in our study described the salience of silence within their families. We call this phenomenon the cultural script of silence, referencing a shared script, or code, held among family members that prohibited the discussion of legal status both within and outside the household. The script of silence shaped parents’ interactions with their children and what they told their children about immigration, citizenship, and undocumented status. The script not only guided the ways in which parents and children interacted, but also informed how parents taught or modeled behaviors, and the ways in which parents communicated and provided support. The importance of silence was ﬁrst learned indirectly. As ﬁftteen-year-old Tommy, whose father had been detained, explained, “I guess it wasn’t really that I found out [about my parents’ status]. It was more like, like an idea you settle into, and that you think is normal. And like all the fears they have, you start to have, too.” Like Tommy, most participants in our sample stated that their parents rarely discussed the realities associated with being undocumented, though many children referenced an embodied comprehension of their parents’ undocumented status as a result of the various ways in which illegality organized dynamics within the mixed-status family. Children came to know deﬁnitively about their parents’ status only through a speciﬁc event that forced parents to explain. For example, when one participant, Marianela, was eight years old, she learned that both her parents were undocumented when her father became severely ill. As she recalled the moment, “I told my mom that we should take him to the hospital to see what is going on with him. . . . And that’s when my mom told me that we can’t take him to the hospital. And that’s when I said, ‘He’s sick. We need to take him to the hospital.’ And my mom told me that my dad didn’t have any papers.” 59 Once citizen children learned that their parents were undocumented, they became keenly aware of the ways in which a cultural script of silence delineated family expectations for children’s interactions outside of the home. For example, Tommy explained that his parents provided him with explicit instructions to monitor his behavior in public: “Whenever we were around important people, you know like, those people who deport other people, I have to behave very well.” In other families, citizen children were strongly encouraged to remain silent about their parents’ undocumented status. As nineyear-old Catarina explained, “Because my mom doesn’t want me to tell anyone she says that she could get in trouble if I talk to people about it.” To be sure, participants were aware of the pragmatic necessity for silence to protect their parents from detection by immigration enforcement agencies. For example, fourteenyear-old Jessica recounted a time when her friend’s mother had been deported after being reported to legal authorities: “It happened to my friend. That’s the only reason why her mom went to Mexico. Because her neighbors snitched them out that her mom didn’t have papers. I worry if I tell someone, the same thing is gonna happen as it happened to her.” Despite the pragmatic need for discretion, the script of silence contributed to experiences of powerlessness among citizen children. As Tommy explained, “we can’t really say our mind or protest because we might get taken. We have to, like, stay to the laws a lot more than other people. Because they’ll judge us on our skin and say, ‘Oh, you’re Mexican. Go to your side.’” In its most extreme manifestation, the cultural script of silence could set into motion a series of emotional or family dynamics that negatively aﬀected the well-being of citizen children. The cultural script of silence shaped children’s cognitive and emotional expression, and some participants described conscious efforts to “not think” about their parents’ situation. Maya, nine years old, put it this way: “I really don’t think about that. I just think fun things.” For many participants, the potential for a direct encounter with law enforcement produced considerable fear, worry, and stress. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �60 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y For example, Maria, a ten-year-old who lived with her undocumented parents and younger citizen brother, explained, “I have papers, and they don’t. They can’t really go places. They could go to prison.” This awareness led to extreme fear of police oﬃcers. When Maria saw a police car near her house, she would run inside, close the curtains, and cry profusely. It was not until the police left the vicinity that Maria would realize her parents were safe, and only then would she come out of hiding. Her fear of law enforcement stemmed from the very real possibility that “maybe one day, they can just take them. And then, me and my little brother would have to go to foster homes. I really don’t want that.” Deliberate eﬀorts to silence thoughts and emotions prevented children from having a space, either with family or friends, to process their fears, anxieties, and worries. The importance of silence within families sometimes acted to weaken supportive bonds between parents and children, and participants reported becoming distrustful of their parents as a result. As eleven-year-old Anthony noted, “They’re lying and all that. Like they knew they did not have papers, but they didn’t tell me.” Surprisingly, silence often continued even after families experienced the worst possible circumstance: the arrest, detention, and deportation of a parent. Children who experienced parental detention or deportation explained that they knew very little about the immigration proceedings that led to the deportation of their parents. For example, Anthony did not understand why his father “went” to Mexico. Although his father had been deported eight months prior to the interview, he reported that he knew “only that my dad was going to Mexico. [My mom] didn’t want to talk about it.” Similarly, for elevenyear-old Ernesto, the events resulting in his father’s deportation were unclear. Ernesto explained that he woke up one day to learn that his father had been “taken” to Mexico. As he described it, “I just woke up and asked mom what happened. And she said they took him back to Mexico. He was somewhere, and they sent him to Mexico. I think he did something bad . . . I don’t know.” Some participants could vividly recall the circumstances surrounding parental deportation because they witnessed directly the arrest and detention of their undocumented parent. For example, Christina was twelve years old when her mother was arrested. According to Christina, who was fourteen at the time of the interview, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived at Christina’s house early one morning: Like ﬁve in the morning. They just came . . . knocking on the door. And like, my mom, she was really scared. And my dad was like, “pack your stuﬀ! And let’s leave.” And [my mom] looked outside the window, and the house was surrounded. It was surrounded by like ICE people. And I heard, like, loud knocking. And like, I just got up . . . and I was like, “what’s going on?” Because there were, like, a lot of people on the porch. Everywhere. I was, like, super scared . . . . And like, they took her. And she gave me the last hug, and um . . . She walked out of the door. And I was like, “You can’t leave us!” [Christina’s voice cracks, and she starts to cry quietly] So . . . me seeing my mom go away, it was very hard for me. Christina recounted how she retreated into herself following her mother’s arrest. As she explained, “I quit my grades, and with, like, everything.” Christina’s eventual healing occurred only after she found a space to vocalize her experience. Still, when Christina reﬂected on that horrible night, she actively wished that she could erase, not only her mother’s arrest, but also her presence during it: “If I could change anything in my life, I would probably change that. I would wish not to be there whenever they took my mom. I wish I would never see that.” Not a single participant in our study described having a plan in place that would help guide and assist children about what to do in the event that a parent was arrested and detained. In this way, the cultural script of silence seemed to thwart the implementation of emergency plans for children and their families. As a result, participants described intense emotional experiences during the arrest and detention of a parent, and in turn, active eﬀorts to r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t mute the painful memories associated with such experiences. For example, thirteen-yearold Guillermo described the arrest and detention of his father this way: “Like sometimes it comes to my mind, but mostly I don’t think about that. I don’t know. When I’m about to go to sleep, it just comes up.” The middles of the night, when he would wake from nightmares about his father, were some of the bleakest times for Guillermo. It is important that the cultural script of silence was not static or unchanging in its manifestation. The salience of the script, both in guiding family dynamics and the extent to which it aﬀected the well-being of citizen children, depended on the quality of resources available to children and their families. Although the script of silence operated as a kind of mediating force that shaped speciﬁc patterns of emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and dynamics within the mixed-status family, the well-being of citizen children was more than the simple presence or absence of a cultural script. Rather, well-being was also shaped by the availability and distribution of and access to social and material resources. DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES All of the participants in our study came to feel, experience, and understand the sociopolitical condition of illegality via their encounters with public institutions and broader community settings. Health care, employment, housing, neighborhood violence, and discrimination emerged as salient nodes around which citizen children came to understand the meaning of their parents’ undocumented status, the political and economic constraints associated with lack of citizenship, and their own location within the constellation of discourses surrounding perceptions of individuals deemed illegal. The political and economic consequences of illegality reverberated across families of mixed-status through everyday experiences. Varied assemblages of legal statuses within and across families—citizen, authorized, undocumented—shaped the everyday experiences of citizen children diﬀerently, and the distribution of resources was often the driving force behind these diﬀerential experiences. As ﬁgure 1 illustrates, access 61 to ﬁnancial, education, extracurricular, mental health, legal, and immigration-related resources often translated to the diﬀerences between suﬀering, on the one hand, and resiliency, on the other. In mixed-status families with one authorized or citizen parent, citizen children described less acute ﬁnancial and housing struggles. In this way, legal status operated as a deﬁnitive resource. Nevertheless, the condition of illegality reverberated across the household even when only one parent was undocumented. In these cases, issues related to the institutional invisibility of the undocumented parent loomed large. For example, Cecilia, the tenyear-old daughter of an undocumented mother and citizen father, recounted that “the school doesn’t know my mom’s name. She can’t sign our paperwork, and they only see my dad.” Her mother’s undocumented status altered the domestic organization of responsibilities within the household, and her father was charged with acting as both mother and father in the public sphere. Among citizen children whose parents were detained, chronic experiences of political and economic marginalization sometimes shaped family decisions to accept deportation. In the case of Jennyfer, a fourteen-year-old who lived with her undocumented grandmother and undocumented mother, her mother became gravely ill. Her mother had been diagnosed with hepatitis C, which Jennyfer thought had been the result of a blood transfusion her mother received during childbirth. The family considered returning to Mexico to enable her mother to receive health care, but soon after this discussion, Jennyfer’s grandmother was arrested and detained. Given the status of the mother’s health, the grandmother accepted deportation so that the mother could receive the care she needed in Mexico. Although Jennyfer felt “sad” to leave the United States, she noted, “I would prefer that we moved here so that my mother could get better rather than stay there and watch her get worse.” For Jennyfer and her family, barriers to accessing health care inﬂuenced the conditions under which they would “accept” deportation. In the end, Jennifyer decided that she would do whatever it would take to stay close to her mother. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �62 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y Many participants who relocated to Mexico to reunite with their deported parents described how they initially missed the conveniences and material abundance associated with life in the United States, such as shopping at big box stores. However, these experiences gave way to more profound sensations of loss about their potential futures and resources. As twelve-year-old Clarissa explained, “If I stay here [in Mexico] I won’t have the chance to have any kind of future.” Participants described Mexico as a place with limited educational and employment opportunity. Twelveyear- old Luciana narrated a particularly diﬃcult adjustment to the school setting in Mexico. She described repeatedly asking for help in her studies, but her teachers did not respond to her requests. They would tell her they were “too bored” by her questions. As a result, she lost any desire to do well in school: “I see that my grades have dropped a lot because I’m like, why would I try if no matter what I do, the teachers aren’t even going to notice?” Cases such as these reveal the various ways in which access to resources might have contributed to diﬀerent outcomes for children in our study. Although legal status excluded many families from accessing resources, such as safe employment and healthcare, key players within institutional and family settings ﬁgured prominently in facilitating participants’ access to what limited resources were available. For example, soon after the arrest and detention of Christina’s mother, described above, her father was detained and deported. Although her mother was eventually released, Christina and her siblings experienced major disruptions in terms of housing and access to material resources. Desolate, Christina broke the script of silence and reached out to her school counselor: “I told my counselor that we really needed help ’cause, like, it was more than ten people living at my aunt’s house. And she didn’t have enough money for us. So [my counselor] got most of the teachers, they donated food and clothes. I remember coming home from school with a lot of bags full of like food and diapers and other stuﬀ.” For Christina and members of her family, the school staﬀ provided material resources needed to sustain family life. Moreover, the counselor created a supportive environment for Christina to process her emotional reactions to her father’s deportation. For other citizen children, extended kin emerged as key brokers to accessing resources. Karla, twelve years old, described the signiﬁcance of extended kin in shaping her experience of reuniting with her family in Mexico following her father’s deportation. Her grandfather helped ease the transition economically by providing Karla’s family with a house in Mexico and giving her father a job working in his painting business. On occasion, Karla’s grandfather would supplement the family’s income when they needed the extra money. With this additional money, Karla was able to maintain her involvement in sports, which helped to provide continuity between her former life in the United States and her new life in Mexico. Karla had participated in club boxing in the United States and was able to join a boxing gym in Mexico. During the interview, Karla noted excitedly that she was anticipating her ﬁrst boxing match. She had been training for “a long, long time. They put me up against a ninth grader, and I am barely in sixth grade. But she’s tiny! And I’ve been training for this . . . for the day that I’ll ﬁght.” The cases of Christina and Karla reveal how access to resources was shaped by relationships between citizen children and other individuals within their social network. In this way, social support functioned as a critical resource, particularly when trusted family and friends constructed a space to dismantle the cultural script of silence. Fourteen-year-old Elena, for example, described how she became withdrawn and uncommunicative on learning that her father had been detained. In response, her mother reached out to her and enrolled her in dance class to provide an outlet for her “frustration.” In this way, Elena’s mother provided support by ﬁnding a space in which Elena could process her emotions. In addition to family, trusted peers operated as a strong system of social support, buﬀering against the trauma associated with immigration enforcement by breaching the script of silence. Elena described school as a kind of second family: “We all know each other. We’ve been knowing r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t each other since ﬁfth grade. So we already have really strong connections because we’ve been growing and our school, they’re like, team and family. So all of us are like our family.” Close friendships at school created spaces of perceived safety in which citizen children could divulge their worst fears, worries, and anxieties. As Elena noted, There is this girl. She is my best friend, and we have known each other since the second grade. And I know that her parents don’t have any papers too, so I mostly tell her everything about my life. Because, um, she told me everything about her life, and how she feels scared that she could lose her parents if they are ever sent to Mexico. So we tell each other everything, and we try to help each other out. School enabled citizen children like Elena to foster relationships based on their shared experiences. Moreover, the school administration facilitated classroom curricula designed to break the script of silence and raise awareness about immigration: See, in our school, like in our history class they teach us about diﬀerent topics and one of the topics has been, um, immigration. We can connect a lot to that since our school is 99.9 percent Hispanics. We already know most of the things so sometimes, like sometimes, it’s an emotional class where we stay strong. So, it’s kind of good to know something else that could help you. Unfortunately, Elena’s experience was rare. Her story reveals the ways in which her links to institutional resources and supportive relationships contributed to her well-being during her father’s detention. Yet, the constellation of individual and family characteristics within her mixed-status family niche also facilitated positive outcomes as well. For example, Elena’s parents had divorced many years before her father was detained. Although her family often spent time together in activities that included both her parents, such as family dinner, Elena did not live with her father. This is not to say that the detention of Elena’s father was no less 63 distressing to her, but rather that her wellbeing was shaped by the complex interaction of various factors, including those within the mixed-status family niche. T H E M I X E D - S TAT U S FA M I LY N I C H E Figure 1 illustrates the elements that make up the micro-setting of daily life in mixed-status families, or the mixed-status family niche. The niche represents the dynamic interplay between characteristics and behaviors at the individual and family level. Parent characteristics and family cohesion were cited as key to the capacity for the family to act as a system of social support and foster well-being. Participants noted that their well-being was deeply tied to their parents’ vulnerabilities and strengths, and thus that parental well-being held the potential to be a source of comfort or of stress for citizen children. Among participants, family histories of substance abuse or trauma were perceived as particularly stressful, capable of exacerbating the negative eﬀects of immigration enforcement experiences. For example, Marisa, a thirteen-year-old who had reunited with her parents in Mexico after their deportation, noted that her father’s history of substance abuse overshadowed her own adjustment to living in a new environment. Marisa had hoped that in reuniting with her parents in Mexico she would recover the parental love and support that she needed and desired. Yet, her relationship with her father was strained, and she described him as distant and uncommunicative. As she explained, “With my father taking drugs, he can’t work and he spends a lot [on drugs]. And my mom has to work to be able to keep up the house. He has promised us so many times, he has sworn to us, that he is going to quit, but he never does. Sometimes he just spends the day in the house sleeping.” In reuniting with her family in Mexico, Marisa was forced to renegotiate her expectations for parental care. Her father’s substance abuse aﬀected his capacity to act as an engaged father and family member, but also produced ﬁnancial strain. In turn, Marissa’s mother worked extended hours and was rarely home. Marissa noted that the family did not agree about the reorganization of family life in Mex- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �64 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y ico, which generated signiﬁcant family conﬂict. In contrast, personal strengths were perceived as diminishing the negative eﬀects or stressors that stemmed from immigration enforcement. For example, Marco, a fourteenyear-old boy, described the importance of a strong work ethic, which was instilled in him by his father. He noted that his father “wants to teach me how to work so I can get our family a better future. I work. I ﬁnd anything I can do. I help my mom.” Marco’s narrative reﬂected the way in which he was becoming socialized to become the patriarch of the family, a process that had been accelerated by the fact that his father was facing deportation. Marco sometimes struggled with his newfound responsibilities but nevertheless accepted them. He explained: I don’t really have my childhood anymore. I don’t get to play around anymore. I always have to be there. I have to be strong for my brothers. I guess I miss when I was smaller and everything being so innocent for me. The world just being there as a playground for me. A place for me to have fun. Now it’s kind of more like a . . . How would you call it? Um . . . obstacle ground. With obstacles. Obstacles I have to go through. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do to take it oﬀ of me. I have to be there. It’s my responsibility, and I have to hold it up, and I have to be there. For Marco, like many citizen children, age and gender shaped the ways that parents organized household roles and responsibilities. The eﬀects of immigration policies and practices often made it diﬃcult for families to build consistent routines for children, which frequently resulted in confusion or resentment about their roles and responsibilities within the household. This was particularly the case among older girls who reunited with their families in Mexico. For example, in the case of ﬁfteen-year-old Melina, she felt that the task of sibling and domestic care detracted from her personal motivation to focus on her education. Both her parents were required to work long hours outside of the household, and they charged Melina with caring for the household. As she explained, “[In the United States], I didn’t have to clean, or work in the kitchen, or anything. It was pure studying because that is what I spent my time doing. But here, no, here it is diﬀerent. Here, you spend all your time cleaning the house, taking care of your siblings. Now it’s no longer about studying.” Reﬂecting on the change in routines in Mexico, Melina noted that she felt resentful toward her new responsibilities in the household. She said that she often took it out on her younger siblings by ignoring them. As her case illustrates, the ways that participants interpreted sudden changes in their routines and responsibilities could produce resentment, frustration, and angst, particularly when new household practices were perceived as thwarting their individual expectations and needs. In contrast, older boys and younger girls in our sample sometimes embraced the opportunity to contribute to the household. Thus, consensus among family members regarding the gendered and age-based organization of household responsibilities contributed to supportive interactions, whereas conﬂict between personal and family expectations could lead to tension. Individual characteristics and behaviors of children and parents were perceived as shaping the quality of family dynamics, yet many participants were cognizant of the ways in which family dynamics were singularly constrained by the broader political economy of U.S. immigration policy. This recognition led numerous citizen children to declare, “Things would be better in my family if only my parents had papers.” C H I LD O U TC O M E S Figure 1 illustrates how, within the context of the political economy of U.S. immigration policy and encounters with enforcement agencies, the distribution of resources, the arrangement of factors in the mixed-status family niche, and the cultural script of silence interact to shape outcomes for citizen children. A range of effects on well-being is suggested, from negative to positive in terms of social and material wellbeing, the mental and emotional status of chil- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t dren, levels of stress, sense of identity and belonging, and academic performance. In this regard, an important theme in our research is that no single and deﬁnitive proﬁle encapsulates the experiences of citizen children in mixed-status families. As illustrated in ﬁgure 1, the eﬀects of immigration encounters on the well-being of citizen children depend heavily on many factors, reﬂecting the combined and continued eﬀects associated with the political economy of U.S. immigration policy, the resources available to children and their families, the organization of the mixed-status family niche, and the cultural scripts that individuals draw on to navigate daily life. Across participants, well-being was experienced diﬀerently depending on family circumstances. Without legal status, wage earners were subject to the realities of participating in an unskilled and informal labor market. As a result, most youth hoped their parents could get papers one day so that they would be able to ﬁnd more satisfying—and better paying— work. As Jose, thirteen years old, noted, if his parents had papers, “they could be here and be comfortable. I just know that my dad says that he wants the papers because he wants a better job.” Additionally, some participants described confusion about their national, ethnic, and legal identities. Having an undocumented parent imposed boundaries of exclusion within school and community settings, even among those who had never experienced parental deportation. For example, twelve-year-old Anna recalled, “a lot of people are very racist at my school. And a lot of them say, ‘Go back where you came from.’” Experiences of discrimination had a disempowering eﬀect on children’s understandings of their social location within these broader settings. As fourteen-year-old David explained, “I don’t feel like other kids in school. I feel kind of like an outlaw.” For youth who experienced parental deportation, some participants described not knowing where they belonged. Ten-year-old Daniel, who accompanied his deported father to Mexico, described “being between two worlds. I have family here and family over there, in both places. I’m like in the middle of Mexico and the U.S.” 65 The potential threats to well-being could bring heightened stress and emotional and mental distress. Fear and worries about their parents’ status, or experiences of parental deportation, made it diﬃcult for youth to engage actively in daily life. One eleven year old, Emma, recounted that every time she left her mother’s side, even at school, she became increasingly nervous that something would happen to her mother and she would not be nearby to help: “It’s just worrying. Like [if I] leave her side. Like not be there to support her.” In another case, Manny, who was fourteen years old, began to experience intense headaches and nausea when his father was deported to Mexico. At the time, he was living with his mother, a U.S. citizen, and younger brother. As he described the experience, “It was nerves. Pure nerves. I was scared that something would happen to my mom. Like, someone would hurt her or kidnap her, or something like that, because my dad wasn’t there.” As time passed, his symptoms worsened, and he began to vomit at school, almost daily. In response, the school sent him home because, as he said, “I couldn’t be without my mom. It scared me.” Finally, his mother took him to a psychologist, who recommended that the family reunite for Manny’s emotional well-being. The family heeded the psychologist’s advice and moved to Mexico to rejoin Manny’s father, whereupon Manny’s symptoms disappeared. In our sample, Manny was not alone in his experience of intense distress. Nearly 30 percent of participants in the study described symptoms often associated with anxiety and depression, including intense bouts of crying, loss of interest in activities, diﬃculties sleeping, loss of appetite, feelings of fear, and suicidal thoughts. Although intense suﬀering was experienced across our sample, citizen children who were in the midst of parental deportation processes reported suﬀering more frequently than children in other groups. Among children who accompanied their deported parents to Mexico, the majority described diﬃculties adjusting to the diﬀerent ecocultural environment, and these diﬃculties could be experienced more intensely depending on the constellation of factors outlined in ﬁgure 1. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �66 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y Such experiences were not universal, however, as described in many of the cases, and some citizen children exhibited extraordinary resilience in the face of the many adversities they confronted. Unfortunately, narratives of well-being were described with less frequency across all groups. This was especially so among citizen children experiencing parental separation due to detention and deportation at the time of the interview: no child in this group reported doing well. In comparison, only seven citizen children whose parents had never been deported and only six who accompanied their parents to Mexico described feeling safe, emotionally secure, and socially connected. Among these children, access to resources to nurture well-being appeared to be a key leverage point in shaping how participants were able to manage their everyday lives. The most fundamental resource, at least from the perspective of citizen children across groups, was family cohesion. As Karla eloquently described it after her family reuniﬁcation in Mexico, Really, I am happy there [in the United States], and I am happy here [in Mexico]. I am happy as long as I have my parents with me. If I am separated from one of them, I don’t know what to do. It hurts. I can’t be as happy as I would if I lived with both of them. I have always lived with both of them. DISCUSSION In this paper, we describe a framework for conceptualizing the eﬀects of immigration enforcement on the well-being of citizen children living with their undocumented Mexican parents. The framework illustrates the complex multidimensional, and often multidirectional, factors citizen children vulnerable to or directly facing parental deportation experience. Our ﬁndings suggest that the everyday realities facing citizen children—and the ways in which these realities shape well-being—cannot be reduced to simple explanations. Thus, we situate youth well-being against a backdrop of multiple factors to understand how indirect and direct encounters with immigration enforcement, the mixed-status family niche, and access to resources shape diﬀerential child outcomes. Participants in our study described wellbeing in terms of a dynamic relationship between personal qualities and the social context surrounding them. In this conﬁguration, the presence or absence of parents emerged as a signiﬁcant theme. Forced family separations were perceived to be the worst stressor facing participants in our sample. Among citizen children without experiences of parental deportation, the potential for a forced separation was never far from their minds. Indeed, the “deportability” of their parents was described overwhelmingly as a major cause for emotional distress (De Genova 2002). For citizen children facing parental deportation, families were forced to confront whether they should separate so that children could remain in their citizen country or relocate to Mexico to keep the family together. In deciding, citizen children had to evaluate the potential emotional, social, and material costs, and brace themselves for the aftermath. The adverse circumstances citizen children faced were not limited to forced family separations and reﬂected the broader consequences associated with the political economy of U.S. immigration policy. Participants described the varied ﬁnancial and emotional costs associated with illegality, supporting research that describes the ways in which citizen children suffer the consequences of their parents’ undocumented status (Chavez et al. 1997; Guendelman et al. 2006; Kersey, Geppert, and Cutts 2007; Perreira and Ornelas 2011). Our results reveal how the personal strengths of parents and children had the potential to shield children from the negative eﬀects of stressors that stemmed from indirect and direct encounters with immigration enforcement. Strengths were often entwined with the availability of resources that could enhance well-being. Access to ﬁnancial, educational, extracurricular, mental health, legal, and immigration-related resources buttressed individual strengths and buﬀered against traumatic experiences related to immigration enforcement and forced family separations. Extended kin and individuals in school and religious institutions emerged as supportive networks that facilitated access to those resources that were important to well-being. Social connection, however, was not without its r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he effects of immigr at ion en forcemen t risks.1 A strong social network was key to the facilitation of well-being among citizen children, but its loss could exacerbate the emotional costs of relocation to Mexico after parental deportation. In our ﬁndings, we point to the cultural script of silence as an additional risk factor that is unique to the experience of mixedstatus families. The presence and pragmatics of cultural silence have been well documented among families and communities of undocumented individuals (De Genova 2002, 2009; Fassin 2001; Menjívar and Kanstroom, 2014). Yet, as Joanna Dreby convincingly argues, U.S. immigration policies have “a profound impact on children in Mexican families regardless of the parents’ or children’s legal status or the family’s actual involvement with the Department of Homeland Security” (2012, 843). The consequences of illegality, and the cultural logics of silence, extend beyond the boundaries of legal status to aﬀect the lives of citizen children as well (Zayas 2015; Zayas and Bradlee 2015), and our ﬁndings point to the diﬀerent ways in which silence operates. Although all participants knew that their parents were undocumented, the cultural script of silence manifested through other processes that encouraged youth to be silent about their experiences of suﬀering with kin, their peers, and even themselves.2 Arguably, silencing not only leads to emotional and mental distress, but also fractures citizen children’s understanding of their place in the world (Fivush 2010). Without a community to safely break the code of silence, citizen children—and their undocumented peers—must risk the potential integrity of their families should they choose to voice their experiences. It is for this reason that any resistance to the cultural script of silence will be found in the most closed, trusted, and intimate spaces. The experiences of immigrant families will remain, for the most part, hidden, camouﬂaged, and unspoken. Continued re- 67 search on the eﬀects of silence on well-being is warranted, especially comparative research that examines the diﬀerential experiences of citizen children and the spectrums of silence. The categories and factors illustrated in ﬁgure 1 are derived from a rigorous approach to qualitative data analysis. Nevertheless, additional research is warranted to test our model and to determine the extent to which certain factors aﬀect citizen children in immigrant families of diﬀerent national origin. Additionally, we did not examine the unique circumstances of children living with psychiatric, cognitive, or developmental disability. Living with disability poses unique opportunities and challenges for families, which might distinguish their experiences as citizen children living in mixed-status families (Farrell and Krahn 2014). Research is still needed that examines the intersections of disability and legal status. Our framework opens the door for a critical discussion of the diﬀerent factors that aﬀect citizen children, and it is our hope that subsequent revisions are made to the framework based on the results of additional research. Of particular importance is the need to investigate how resources available in citizen children’s local environment shape the degree to which cultural scripts, such as the script for silence, and individual coping mechanisms become helpful or harmful. Our ﬁndings provide opportunities to inﬂuence immigration enforcement policies and practices. Experiences of family cohesion and dissolution hold particular relevance for this population, signifying potential avenues to reorganize programs and policies to enhance the well-being of citizen children. For example, the signiﬁcance of the theme of family separation suggests the need to reconsider detention procedures that thwart family togetherness. Current practices that detain parents in locations that are geographically distant from family households pose serious risks to the emotional 1. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for the suggestion regarding this point. 2. Our participants were aware of their parents’ legal status, and this distinguishes our results from other research that reveals that many children, especially those who are undocumented, remain unaware of their families’ legal status until they attend college (Gonzales 2011). This points to the diversity of experiences within immigrant families, both in terms of how children become aware of legal status differences and the experiences that such knowledge engenders. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �68 undocumen ted immigr a n ts a nd their ex perience w ith illega lit y well-being of citizen children (Zayas 2015). In the end, our results point to many resources that were perceived as mattering most. It is our hope, in oﬀering a comprehensive account of the eﬀects of immigration enforcement, that the framework can be used to modify leverage points that oﬀer the potential for change in micro and macro settings in ways that appreciate the diversity of citizen children’s experiences. Farrell, Anne F., and Gloria L. 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Bradlee. 2015. “Children of Undocumented Immigrants: Imperiled 2013. “Undocumented Status: Implications for Developmental Trajectories.” In Race, Ethnicity Child Development, Policy, and Ethical Re- and Self: Identity in Multicultural Perspective, ed- search.” New Directions for Child and Adolescent ited by Elizabeth P. Salett and Diane R. Koslow. Development 2013(141): 61–78. Washington, D.C.: National Association of Social Super, Charles M., and Sara Harkness. 1986. “The Workers. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:05:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Exploring the Effects of U.S. Immigration Enforcement on the Well-being of Citizen Children in Mexican Immigrant Families Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gulbas, Lauren, E Zayas, Luis, H Subject The topic of the resource Mexican Immigration Health and Well-Being Immigration Enforcement Description An account of the resource In this article, we draw on ecocultural theories of risk and resilience to examine qualitatively the experiences of U.S. citizen children living with their undocumented Mexican parents. Our purpose is to render visible the various ways in which citizen children confront and navigate the possibilities—and realities—of parental deportation. We develop a framework to conceptualize the complex multidimensional, and often multidirectional, factors experienced by citizen children vulnerable to or directly facing parental deportation. We situate youth well-being against a backdrop of multiple factors to understand how indirect and direct encounters with immigration enforcement, the mixed-status family niche, and access to resources shape differential child outcomes. In doing so, we offer insights into how different factors potentially contribute to resilience in the face of adversity. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017–7 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Journal Article Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2017.3.4.04 Language A language of the resource English https://dh.scu.edu/exhibits/files/original/90/2942/PDhistory_source_.pdf 1b3660953b85febfc4233d111060c80c PDF Text Text The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization Author(s): Hana E. Brown, Jennifer A. Jones and Andrea Becker Source: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences , August 2018, Vol. 4, No. 5, Immigration and Changing Identities (August 2018), pp. 118-140 Published by: Russell Sage Foundation Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.06 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.06?seq=1&cid=pdfreference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Russell Sage Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization H a na E. Brow n, Jen n ifer A. Jon es, a n d A n dr e a Beck er This article analyzes patterns in Latino immigrant racialization in the U.S. South. Drawing on a unique dataset of more than 4,200 news stories from the region, we find that Latino immigrants face multifaceted racialization in the news media and that this racialization shares substantive similarities with African American racialization processes. The most dominant negative characterizations of Mexican and Latino immigrants focus on their perceived criminal tendencies. Claims of Latino criminality apply implicitly coded racial language about black criminality to new Latino arrivals. A close qualitative analysis of these trends reveals an ongoing cycle of racialization in which immigration foes challenge Latino or Mexican immigrants as criminal elements and immigration advocates respond with charges of racism and discrimination. Supplemental analyses from four African American newspapers suggest that black elites perceive Latinos as sharing a common experience of racial discrimination at the hands of whites. Keywords: race, immigration, South, Latinos, criminalization, racialization Due in large part to immigration, the Latino share of the U.S. population has increased dramatically in recent years. Latinos now make up 16 percent of the U.S. population, accounting for half of the nation’s growth demographic in the past decade (Passel, Cohn, and Lopez 2011). By 2050, demographers project that the Latino population will have doubled to more than one hundred million (Krogstad 2015). Thanks to these transformations, a vigorous debate has Hana E. Brown is associate professor of sociology at Wake Forest University. Jennifer A. Jones is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Andrea Becker is a PhD student in sociology at Vanderbilt University. © 2018 Russell Sage Foundation. Brown, Hana E., Jennifer A. Jones, and Andrea Becker. 2018. “The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 4(5): 118–40. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2018.4.5.06. The authors would like to thank Felicia Arriaga, Ann Hollingsworth, Christina Lawrence, Robert Reece, and Nura Sediqe for their research assistance. Funding for this research was provided by a Russell Sage Presidential Authority Award (#88-14-05) and grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-1728780), University of Notre Dame, and Wake Forest University. The first two authors are equal co-authors, listed in alphabetical order. Direct correspondence to: Hana E. Brown at brownhe@wfu.edu, Department of Sociology, Wake Forest University, Box 7808, 1834 Wake Forest Rd., Winston-Salem, NC 27109; Jennifer A. Jones at jjones23@nd.edu, Department of Sociology, University of Notre Dame, 749 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556; and Andrea Becker at andrea.beccker @vanderbilt.edu, Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, PMB 351811, Nashville, TN 37235. Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts emerged about the role that Latino immigrants occupy in the U.S. racial hierarchy (Bonilla-Silva 2004; Chavez 2008; Lee and Bean 2004). Will Latinos join African Americans as collective minorities? Are they assimilating into whiteness? Or will Latinos occupy a distinctive racial position between whites and African Americans? These questions have taken on particular importance in the U.S. South, a region long characterized by stark black-white divisions and now home to the fastest growth Latino population in the nation (Kochhar, Suro, and Tafoya 2005). Most work on these questions draws either from large-scale analyses of survey data (Frank, Akresh, and Lu 2010; Golash-Boza 2006) or on qualitative case studies focused on a single locale (Marrow 2011; Ribas 2015). Recognizing that the media are a critical site of racial formation (Omi and Winant 1994) and an important aspect of the context of reception (Menjívar 2016), we analyze patterns in Latino immigrant racialization in Southern news coverage. Our analyses of immigrant racialization draw from a unique dataset of more than 4,200 news stories from 2003 to 2013 from eight newspapers across four new destination states: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. Results indicate that Latino immigrants face multifaceted racialization in the news media and that this racialization is, in key ways, consistent in substance and form with that faced by African Americans. Rather than focus on immigrants as economic threats, the most dominant negative characterizations of Mexican immigrants and of Central and South American immigrants focus on their perceived criminal tendencies. Moreover, claims of Latino criminality apply implicitly coded racial language about black criminality to new Latino arrivals (Alexander 2012; Mendelberg 2001). Our results further suggest that pro-immigration forces also racialize Latinos, albeit differently. Despite much evidence that immigrants use economic arguments to make claims for various rights (Deckard and Browne 2016), we find that an equally if not more common argument made to defend Latino immigrants in Southern newspapers is that they face racism and discrimination. The writers, editorial board members, and 119 political figures making these arguments routinely draw parallels between immigration enforcement efforts and the South’s historic commitment to racial inequality, Jim Crow, and segregation. A close qualitative analysis of these trends reveals an ongoing cycle of racialization in which immigration foes challenge Latino or Mexican immigrants as criminal elements, and immigration advocates respond with charges of racism and discrimination. Supplemental analyses of 476 news stories from the largest African American newspapers in these states reveal that these newspapers portray immigrants much more positively than mainstream newspapers do. Our results further suggest that African American political and cultural elites perceive Latinos as sharing a common experience of racial discrimination at the hands of whites. These findings suggest that, at this historical juncture, Latinos are not uniformly assimilating into whiteness. Rather, in key ways, Latinos in the South face racialization as collective minorities. Our results also suggest a need for renewed attention to the role that the social distinctions of place play in shaping ideas about race. Moreover, they indicate that making sense of the racially transformative effects of immigration requires a nuanced understanding of the racialization process. Existing research largely emphasizes explicit micro patterns of immigrant racial self-identification and macro patterns of state ascription (but see Mora 2014). Although important, this focus neglects the effects that pro-immigration forces, meso-level organizations, and implicit racial appeals have on immigrants’ place in and adjustment to U.S. race relations and racial hierarchies. R aci a li z at i o n , I m m i g r at i o n , a n d N e w I m m i g r a n t D e s t i n at i o n s Over the course of U.S. history, racial dynamics and immigration trends have been closely intertwined (Calavita 2007; Lee 2002; Molina 2013). Immigration patterns not only affect individual and collective self-identification, they influence intergroup relations, racial hierarchies, and racialized public policies (Lee and Bean 2004, 2012). Contemporary questions r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �120 Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities about Latino racialization emerge from this broader entanglement of racial formation processes and immigration trends and settlement patterns.1 To assess the effect of immigration on racial formation requires a foundational recognition of the socially constructed nature of racial categories and groups. Racial meanings vary from society to society as well as overtime within a particular geographic and social context. These shifts arise in part due to racialization processes that make racial distinctions and schemas “common sense—a way of comprehending, explaining, and acting in the world” (Omi and Winant 1994, 60). Racialization, in Frantz Fanon’s formulation of the term, referred to colonialism’s erasure of intragroup differences and its imposition of racial categories onto previously distinct groups (2004). Today, racialization “signals the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon” (Murji and Solomos 2005, 1). Race and stratification scholars generally concur that racialization involves the mutually constitutive processes of ascription and identification (Brodkin 1998; Brown and Jones 2015; Nobles 2000). Ascription involves the application of arbitrary and usually phenotypic characteristics to lump together individuals into a meaningful social category. This process creates a common sense assumption of shared characteristics used to legitimate specific patterns of resource allocation and exploitation (Lacayo 2017). The identificational element of racialization involves acceptance of this designation, often for mobilization or identity construction (Espiritu 1993; Okamoto and Mora 2014; Omi and Winant 1994). U.S. research on racialization has focused heavily on black-white racial dynamics, but racial formation involves groups such as Latinos as well. Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, Latino racialization patterns have shifted in response to political, legal, and demographic actions (Jimenez 2009; Mora 2014; Oboler 1995; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rodriguez 2000; Rumbaut 2011; Sommers 1991). The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo classified Mexican-origin people as legally white regardless of ancestry. However, this classification did not translate into social acceptance as whites (Gutiérrez 1995; Haney-Lopez 1997; Montejano 1987). As a result, the first half of the twentieth century involved constant social and political negotiations over the racial status of Latin American and Caribbean origin individuals. Latin American and Caribbean origin peoples in the United States found themselves alternately subject to Jim Crow, segregation, and exclusion on the one hand, and the beneficiaries of resource access and protections not afforded to African Americans and Asian Americans on the other, depending on origin, phenotype, and location of settlement (FitzGerald and Cook-Martin 2014; Hattam 2007; Ngai 2005). The racial positioning of Mexican Americans in particular varied by geography, by time period, and even by institutional setting (Fox and Guglielmo 2012). After the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, migration from Latin American countries swelled, and Latino identity and racialization took on new political significance. Motivated in part by a desire to eliminate legalized racial discrimination in both civil rights and immigration law, the law shifted the allocation of visas. With few visas available to immigrants from the Western hemisphere, Latinos, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, became further connected in the collective imaginary to “illegal” or undocumented immigration. In the 1990s and 2000s, various geopolitical and economic shifts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement set off unprecedented migration flows, marking an explosive period of Latino population growth in the United States that was compounded by high fertility rates among U.S.-based Latinos (Massey, Durand, and Malone 2003). This period also witnessed a fundamental shift in the settlement patterns of Latino in dividuals in the United States. Thanks to new economic opportunities and heightened immigration enforcement in some traditional des- 1. Whether Latinos constitute a race is much debated. We argue that Latinos experience racializing processes that homogenize a diverse population, institutionalize categories in a status hierarchy, and unevenly distribute resources along those lines (Browne and Odem 2012, 322). r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts tinations, Latino immigrants began settling in large numbers in small towns and suburbs across the nation (Massey 2008; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008). Southeastern states such as Georgia and North Carolina saw massive increases in their Latino and foreign-born populations and now rank in the top ten in terms of states with the highest population of unauthorized immigrants (Massey 2008; Singer 2004; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008). These demographic transformations raise old questions about Latino racialization but in a new context—the U.S. South. Given that racial dynamics in the South have largely revolved around black-white relations and inequalities, what position do Latinos occupy in the region’s racial landscape? Some hypothesize that Latinos will join African Americans as collective minorities (Jones 2012; Smith 2014). Others highlight the possibility that Latinos will assimilate into whiteness (Alba 2016; Alba and Islam 2009; Gans 2017; but see Vargas 2015) or occupy a distinctive and possibly elevated racial position between whites and blacks (Bonilla- Silva 2004; Frank, Akresh, and Lu 2010; Gans 1999; Alba and Islam 2009; Lee and Bean 2004; Marrow 2011). To address this question, a collection of pathbreaking researchers have examined emergent racial dynamics on the ground in new immigrant destinations like the U.S. South. Focused largely on the early 2000s or periods prior, these studies present evidence of black- brown tensions, conflict, and distancing. Although both blacks and whites at the time perceived Latinos as outsiders, African Americans did so thanks in part to perceptions of resource competition and long histories of interracial hostility and resource competition (LeDuff 2000; Marrow 2011; Ribas 2015; Rich and Miranda 2005; Stuesse 2009). These results provide empirical support for the view that Latinos occupy a racial middle. However, this interpretation depends on whether distancing is understood as a short-term mobility strategy used by immigrants throughout history to avoid association with blacks or a more lasting trian- 121 gulated position in which Latinos are neither accepted by whites nor demoted to collective blacks (Kim 1999; Roediger 2006). Further, shifts in immigration enforcement priorities and racial politics in the mid-2000s may have altered Latino racial incorporation trajectories since these earlier studies were conducted (Jones 2012; Marrow 2017; Williams 2016). Indeed, in the South today, traditional indicators of racial incorporation, such as intermarriage rates and residential segregation patterns, show clear similarities between blacks and Latinos, suggesting possible shifts in racialization processes on the ground in recent years (Frey 2015; Lofquist et al. 2012).2 Existing studies on these questions draw largely on in-depth ethnographic research that provides a nuanced and powerful picture of emergent race relations in individual communities. Although these are essential contributions to our understanding of the racializing facets of immigration, the emphasis on individual community relations offers limited insights into the broader context in which the dynamics of racialization and intergroup re lations occur, suggesting a need for cross- regional work. Moreover, because few of these studies account for cultural and institutional discourses, further work is required to understand the broader practices that drive ascriptive racialization and the location of Latinos in the racial hierarchy (Chavez 2008; Chavez 2012; Mora 2014; Santa Ana 2002). This gap in the research is consequential not only because ascription is an essential component of racialization, but also because it plays an important role in shaping race relations and social policy (Browne, Deckard, and Rodriguez 2016; McConnell 2011). Because the news media are an important part of the context of reception (Menjívar 2016), media analysis provides a useful opportunity to address these gaps. As Eileen McConnell notes, the mass media actively construct metaphors, ideologies, and beliefs about nonwhites in the United States, often emphasizing a narrow range of negative topics that link racial mi- 2. Out-marriage rates for blacks and Latinos are similarly low in the four states under study here (Lofquist et al. 2012). Hispanic and black residential segregation rates are also similar, with Hispanic-white segregation indices revealing increasing segregation in recent years (Frey 2015). r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities 122 norities with social problems (2011). This focus shapes public perceptions of nonwhites as racialized nuisances and social threats. News media shape both conscious and unconscious biases about immigrants and racial minorities (Haney-Lopez 1997; Kaufmann 2003). For example, the media have powerfully shaped popular understandings of African Americans, portraying them as dangerous outsiders, predators, and public menaces. These portrayals occur at rates that are disproportionate to the actual crime rate among African Americans, arise in both fictional and nonfictional contexts, and perpetuate stereotypes of pervasive criminality and social threat (Chiricos and Eschholz 2002; Dixon and Linz 2000b; Smiley and Fakunle 2016). The media in traditional immigrant destinations have also constructed Latinos and immigrants as existential threats to U.S. culture and the nation-state (Chavez 2008; De Genova and Ramos-Zayas 2003; McConnell 2011; Rodriguez 2000; Santa Ana 2002). Such representations characterize Latinos as unassimilable, foreign, and an economic threat. These media characterizations are not mere expressions of grievances. They shape the ideologies and social understandings of local residents toward racial groups and toward immigration (Brown 2013; Domke 2000; Flores 2003; Hopkins 2010). Because the media construct and disseminate cultural frames that give meaning to critical issues, they play a crucial role in the racialization process and in immigration politics (Gilens 1999; Menjívar 2016; Rodriguez 2018). They also shape the attitudes of bureaucrats, and policymakers who shape opportunities and access for these groups, closing off opportunities for incorporation and upward mobility (Dunaway, Branton, and Abrajano 2010; Sohoni and Mendez 2014). Examining newspaper coverage in Oregon, José Padín argues that news media play a critical role in shaping what he calls the “climate of new immigrant reception,” asserting that the media frames Latinos relationally, positioning them according to a set of normative racialized codes that are used to distinguish or establish similarities to other groups (2005). Such processes are deeply implicated in the construction of local racial hierarchies and in the identity formation of Latinos, who may decide to contest or accept this new set of ascriptive meanings and definitions assigned to them (Dávila 2012; Mora 2014). Data a n d M e t h o d s To assess Latino racialization in new destinations, we conducted a news media content analysis of more than 4,200 news stories from 2003 to 2013 from eight newspapers across the South. The use of newspapers to analyze public discourse is a long-standing trend in the social sciences. In recent years, newspaper circulation has decreased, suggesting that newspaper framing may have less public impact than previously. That said, ample evidence suggests that that declining print subscriptions are counterbalanced by increases in online subscriptions and readership (Mitchell and Rosenstiel 2012). Studies also reveal that the content and framing of mainstream print, online, and social media news sources are relatively similar (Janssen 2010; O’Neill et al. 2015; Smith 2005). Given these trends and parallel framing processes, print media sources continue to present useful data for the analysis of cultural framing and public discourse. We analyzed newspapers from four Southern states: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina.3 As table 1 shows, these four states have witnessed rapid growth in their Latino and foreign-born populations since 1990 (Migration Policy Institute 2012). Using Access World News Database and the online archives of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, we randomly sampled news stories per year from 2003 to 2013 from each of the two largest newspapers in each state. To create these samples, we searched for articles including the term immigra and retained only those that discussed immigration- related issues in the United States. We then sampled from the eligible stories to retain fifty 3. The eight newspapers are the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Biloxi Sun-Herald, the Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Augusta Chronicle, the Charlotte Observer, and the Raleigh News and Observer. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 123 Table 1. Foreign-Born Population and Change by State, 1990–2010 1990 Estimate 2000 Estimate 2010 Estimate 1990 to 2010 Percent Change 19,767,316 43,533 173,126 20,383 115,077 31,107,889 87,772 577,273 39,908 430,000 21,419,957 168,596 942,959 61,428 719,137 8.4 287.3 444.7 201.4 524.9 Region United States Alabama Georgia Mississippi North Carolina Source: Migration Policy Institute 2012. stories per state per year for analysis. We did so by taking every Nth story, where N equaled the number of eligible stories that year divided by fifty. After compiling the dataset, we used Dedoose, a cloud-based qualitative content analysis software, to code these stories. All codes with less than 80 percent intercoder reliability were dropped from the analysis. The average for the retained codes was 98 percent agreement. The coding scheme included codes for racial labels, immigrant country or region of origin, speaker characteristics, positive and negative characterizations of immigrants, and article type and date. In addition to this specified analysis, we used the full universe of news stories on immigration (approximately twenty-three thousand stories) to construct broader histories of immigration and immigration policy in each state to provide context for the study. We supplemented this analysis with content analysis of immigration-related stories published in the one of the largest African American newspapers from each state.4 Following the same sampling and coding procedures as for the mainstream newspapers, we compiled and analyzed a dataset of 476 additional news stories from the African American newspapers. In what follows, we present results first from the mainstream newspapers, highlighting trends in reporting of immigrants over time. We follow that discussion with results from the African American newspapers. L at i n o R aci a li z at i o n i n M a i n s t r e a m N e w s pa p e r s Results reveal consistent patterns in the characterizations of immigrants in mainstream newspapers in the U.S. South. Table 2 presents descriptive statistics for the most frequently occurring themes for each code category. Overall, news stories contained slightly more negative characterizations of immigrants than positive ones. Approximately 31 percent of stories contained at least one negative characterization; 29 percent characterized immigrants positively. The relative balance between positive and negative characterizations may well reflect the long-standing journalistic practices of seeking multiple competing viewpoints to demonstrate “objectivity” (Schudson 1981; American Press Association 2017). Our results suggest, however, that even if journalistic norms encourage reporters to balance both negative and positive viewpoints on immigrants, the substance of these viewpoints varies in important ways. Immigration advocates and opponents used distinct portrayals of immigrants that reveal complex and contested debate about the specific characteristics of immigrants worthy of discussion. The most common negative claim about immigrants emphasized the perceived criminal tendencies of noncitizens; economic threat claims were far less common. Nearly 60 percent of the negative arguments made about immigrants involved judgments about immigrants’ involvement in criminal activities or their crim- 4. These newspapers include the Jackson Advocate, the Birmingham Times, the Atlanta Daily World, and the Charlotte Post. Only the Atlanta Daily World is publicly available for our entire period, from 2003 to 2013. We acknowledge these limitations when discussing our data from these newspapers. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities 124 Table 2. Descriptive Statistics for Key Codes Code Total (N) Frequency Article type Letter to editor News reporting Opinion Total articles in categorya 320 2,857 1,033 4,208 0.08 0.68 0.25 1.00 Immigrant country or region Central or South America Mexico Vietnam Total articles in categorya 125 864 73 1,527 0.03 0.21 0.02 0.36 Negative immigrant Crime Drain collective resources Steal jobs Total articles in categorya 779 367 194 0.19 0.09 0.05 1,323 0.31 Positive immigrant Hard work Make collective resources Racism or discrimination Total articles in categorya 401 318 582 1,227 0.10 0.08 0.14 0.29 Race Asian Black Latino or Hispanic Total articles in categorya 104 428 982 1,245 0.02 0.10 0.23 0.30 Speaker Federal official or politician State, local elected official Advocacy, service, nonprofit Immigrant member of public Total articles in categorya 384 535 464 365 1,590 0.09 0.13 0.11 0.09 0.38 Source: Authors’ compilation. Total is the total number of articles with codes for that category. Because an article might have references to multiple subcodes within a category, totals are not the sum of all subcodes for the code category. a inal predispositions. This argument is exemplified by a 2005 piece in the Raleigh News and Observer, which reported on crimes involving local immigrants. The article noted that “Eight illegal immigrants from Honduras pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges related to a multistate scheme to steal and resell more than $2.5 million worth of baby formula and over- the-counter drugs” (Weigl 2005). An article from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi similarly highlighted the fact that the perpetrator of a local crime was an undocumented immigrant: “A police report shows the suspect in the Wheaton hit-and-run is Jaime Martinez, an illegal immigrant wanted for a homicide in Mexico, who was driving a borrowed 1997 white Cadillac” (Apel 2011). Like constructions of African Americans, these news stories portray im- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 125 0.0050 0.25 0.0040 0.20 0.0030 0.15 0.0020 Crime characterizations Violent crime rate 0.10 0.0010 0.0000 Crime Claims Violent Crime Rate Figure 1. Crime Claims by Year and Violent Crime Rate 0.05 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 0.00 Source: Authors’ calculations. migrants as dangerous menaces. Further, media elites opted for language and contextual associations that depict illegal status as a criminal violation, despite the fact that unauthorized presence in the United States is a civil, not a criminal, infraction. Although illegality could be framed as a bureaucratic, legal, or administrative issue, by and large the news media chose to frame illegality as a form of criminality. These discussions of crime dwarfed the other negative stereotypes about immigrants, despite the fact that crime rates for immigrants and in immigrant-heavy areas are consistently lower than in other areas (Ewing, Martinez, and Rumbaut 2016; Nowrasteh 2015; Rumbaut 2009). Indeed, as figure 1 shows, the prevalence of criminality claims in our data do not reflect any shifts in the crime rate in these four states under the study period.5 Although crime characterizations rose and fell between 2003 and 2013, the violent crime rate trend remained stable from 2003 to 2008 and gradually declined between 2008 and 2013. Moreover, the largest spike in crime characterizations in 2011 occurred despite a dip in the violent crime rate the same year. The crime characterization was so dominant in our data that the second most frequent negative characterization of immigrants (that they drain collective resources) constituted only 28 percent of all negative characterizations. A story from Georgia typified the “drain collective resources” argument when it reported that residents in the state “want the law to clear the state of illegal immigrants, who they say are taking advantage of Georgia’s schools, hospitals and workplaces, draining public funds as they take jobs that could help the unemployed” (Schneider 2011). Only 15 percent of articles contained the claim that immigrants steal jobs from citizens, despite prior scholars pointing to economic threat as a dominant anti-immigrant sentiment (Wilson 2001; Deckard and Browne 2016; Fryberg et al. 2012). A news story from Raleigh, North Carolina, conveyed this argument in a 2011 story on opposition to immigration. The story quoted Ron Woodward, president of an North Carolina– based advocacy group called N.C. Listen, as saying, “If we had half of those people here illegally and those jobs were freed up, that’s 100,000 Americans today that would have a job that don’t have one . . . That would be a great improvement” (Barrett 2011). That the steal jobs argument appears so rarely in the data is surprising given the wealth of academic and public attention to the presumed economic costs of immigration to American-born workers (Newton 2000; Simon and Sikich 2007; Stuesse 2009; Wright, Levy, and Citrin 2015). Although negative and positive characterizations appeared at similar frequencies in our 5. The trends in crime rates are not driven by a single state. In Alabama, the per capita violent crime rate remained the same from 2003 to 2013, but in the other three states it declined over the same period. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �126 Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities sample, positive characterizations and countervailing arguments about immigrants took a variety of forms. The most common counterpoint offered did not address crime but instead asserted that immigrants in the region face racism and discrimination. Indeed, nearly 50 percent of stories that portrayed immigrants positively made the case that immigrants experience racism or discrimination.6 The second most common positive argument made about immigrants characterized noncitizens as hard workers who contribute to the U.S. economy. These arguments about work ethic and economic contributions made up approximately 33 percent of all positive arguments made about immigrants. The third most common positive argument (26 percent) identified immigrants as contributors to the public good or as individuals who make collective resources from which others benefit. Around 14 percent of positive claims argued that immigrants have strong family values or that immigrant children are deserving members of society. If immigration opponents attempted to steer public discourse toward the assumed criminality of immigrants, supporters focused instead on racism and discrimination and on work ethic. To understand media trends in immigration coverage, we also examined the countries of origin noted for those immigrants discussed in the mainstream newspapers. Country of origin proved an important device for writers in framing their arguments about immigration. A full 36 percent of news articles noted immigrants’ country or region of origin. Of these articles, 57 percent focused on immigrants from Mexico, an unsurprising trend given the demographics of the newly arrived noncitizen population in these states. No other region or country of origin made up more than 8 percent of the total. Because public and media discourse about immigration also relies at times on racialized framing to make arguments about immigrants, we also coded for the use of racial labels in immigration-related news coverage (Brown 2013). Approximately 30 percent of all articles used at least one racial descriptor in their reporting on immigration. The most commonly used racial category was Latino-Hispanic (nearly 80 percent of all racial labels applied), suggesting that Southern media discourse on immigration is overwhelming centered on Latinos rather than other, in some cases, sizable populations such as Asian Americans. To assess news media depictions of Latino and Mexican immigrants specifically, we examined the co-occurrence of negative and positive characterization codes with country of Mexican origin and Latino-Hispanic race codes (see figures 2 and 3). First, we examined the most common negative characterizations made in articles that discuss Mexican immigrants. Surprisingly, only 15 percent of negative immigrant characterizations in our data set asserted that Mexicans newcomers steal jobs or otherwise threaten the economic stability of nonimmigrants.7 Rather than highlight the economic effects of immigration, the most common attacks levied against Mexican immigrants during this period characterized these newcomers as criminals. Nearly two- thirds of all negative characterizations in these stories labeled Mexican immigrants as perpetrators of crime. These stories took multiple forms, including news reporting on individual instances of criminal activity perpetrated by noncitizens, groups of immigrants implicated in gang activity and the illegal drug trade, and undocumented immigrants as inherently criminal due to their unauthorized status. Consider the following quote from a 2011 Augusta Chronicle story: U.S. Attorney Ed Tarver said Wednesday that 51-year-old Oscar Lazo and 35-year-old Eva Ramos were charged with conspiring to sell the stolen identities of U.S. citizens and harboring illegal immigrants. Prosecutors also charged Maurcio Cruz and Manuel Cruz— 6. Racism or discrimination claims appear at similar rates in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina (around 50 to 52 percent of all positive claims and 14.1 percent to 16.6 percent of all stories) but are slightly less common in Georgia (36 percent of all positive codes and 38 percent of all published stories). 7. By contrast, the most frequently made negative claim in stories about Middle Eastern immigrants involved terrorism; Southeast Asian immigrants were chided for their lack of English skills. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 127 Figure 2. Negative Characterizations of Immigrants 0.70 Mexico Latinos or Hispanics 0.60 Total negative Proportion 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 ts ris ob s Te r ro St ea lj us io re lig rly ve O N ot as s O ve rly im fe rt ile ila tin g h is En gl N o D ra in co Cr im e or cr im in al s D on 't wo lle rk ct iv e re so ur ce s 0.00 Source: Authors’ calculations. Figure 3. Positive Characterizations of Immigrants 0.60 Mexico Latinos or Hispanics Proportion 0.50 Total positive 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 sm s ci ra e Fa c ct iv e re so ur ce wo rk in g H ar d s lu e va ily Fa m En gl is ng ni ar co lle Le M ak e D es er As vi ng si m ila tin g ch ild re n h 0.00 Source: Authors’ calculations. both citizens of Mexico—with using the stolen identities to get hired at the restaurant. (Augusta Chronicle 2011) As is typical in the data, this story not only reports on law-breaking activities by Mexican immigrants, but also stresses the criminal schemes hatched by those immigrants. Whereas the most common negative characterization of Mexican immigrants focused on criminal tendencies and activities, the two most common positive characterizations em- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �128 Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities phasized immigrants’ hard work and strong work ethic (44 percent) or claimed that immigrants face racism and discrimination (46 percent).8 Although the aggregate measures show the hard work and racism claims as equally prevalent, time-series analyses reveal that arguments about Mexicans’ work ethic were most common in the earlier years of our sample, and racism-discrimination arguments remain consistently high. In only one year (2006), did the hard work argument appear more frequently than the racism or discrimination argument, suggest that the latter argument about Mexicans was more dominant than the aggregate numbers reveal.9 These results indicate that, since 2003, immigration discourse in Southern news media has crystallized around two themes: the criminality of Mexican immigrants and the discriminatory treatment these immigrants face.10 But are these discussions primarily about race or primarily about country of origin? To answer that question, we examined characterizations of Latinos-Hispanics in our dataset (see figures 2 and 3). Results reveal similar patterns. Again, the most common negative characterization in these articles involved crime and criminality. More than half (53 percent) of the stories that discussed Latinos also made assertions about their supposed criminal tendencies. Virtually the same proportion of stories with positive characterizations (47 percent) argued that Latinos face ongoing racism and discrimination. Notably, news stories were more likely to make claims of racism and discrimination when discussing Latinos or Hispanics (52 percent) than when discussing Mexicans specifically (46 percent). Arguments about immigrant work ethic were also far more common in stories about Mexicans (44 percent) than in stories about Latinos or Hispanics (34 percent). These linguistic distinctions may signal differences in an ethnic versus a racial framing, the former intended to construct and denote population characteristics that are cultural and more positive than the latter (Hattam 2007).11 Despite these distinctions, these findings suggest a deep racialization of immigration discourse in the news media, with media coverage focused on constructions of Latino criminality and anti- Latino racism. In at least three respects, this media characterization of Latino newcomers parallels the long-standing associations between African Americans and criminality (Alexander 2012; Mendelberg 2001). First, the emphasis in our data on Latinos as dangerous outsiders with inherent criminal tendencies mirrors the long- standing characterization of African Americans as dangerous outsiders, predators, and public 8. These same patterns hold for stories that discussed Central American immigrants. We do not report this data because references to Central American immigrants were rare in our data set (fewer than two hundred references total or less than 5 percent of all stories). 9. These shifts do not appear to reflect increases in the employment of Latino journalists by newspapers in our data set. Our story-by-story analysis suggests that only 2 percent of all stories in the dataset were written by Latino journalists, with no increase overtime in the publication of Latino-authored pieces. 10. Additional analyses suggest these patterns do not reflect significant differences in code distribution across article types (news reporting, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces). The majority of crime and racism codes appear in news stories. News stories constituted 68 percent of our total sample. Approximately 64 percent of racism claims and 72 percent of crime claims occur in news stories. Opinion pieces, which constituted 25 percent of the sample, contained 33 percent of the racism codes and 23 percent of the crime codes. Both codes are underrepresented in letters to the editor. A breakdown of results by state shows that these trends are not driven by a single state. Rather, trends appear regionally. 11. Whether there is an analytic distinction between race and ethnicity is heavily debated (see Brown and Jones 2015). Here, we follow panethnicity researchers and colloquial usage in treating national-origin labels as ethnic, in contrast to panethnic or racial labels that homogenize diverse national origin groups (Okamoto and Mora 2014). In using the terms racial and ethnic in this fashion, we do not suggest a clear analytical distinction between the two concepts but rather argue that the two concepts conjure different “associative chains” that produce distinct discourses in the United States (Hattam 2007) r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 129 Figure 4. Crime and Racism Claims by Year in Mainstream Newspapers 0.25 Proportion 0.20 0.15 0.10 Crime 0.05 0.00 Racism 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Source: Authors’ calculations. menaces (Russell-Brown 2008; Alexander 2012). Second, just as assumptions of black criminality often precede any actual criminal actions (Yancy 2016), news coverage of Latinos in our data typically assume criminality on the basis of a civil violation: unauthorized presence. Third, media portrayals of African American and Latino crime are disproportionate to the actual levels of crime committed by those groups (Dixon and Linz 2000a). Our results further suggest that Latino racialization originates not only from critics of immigrants who characterize Latinos and Mexicans as criminals but also from pro- immigration forces. Rather than make pro- immigrant arguments grounded in economic or human rights claims (Bloemraad, Silva, and Voss 2016; Deckard and Browne 2016; Fujiwara 2005; Lawlor 2015), immigration news stories more often asserted that immigrants, Latinos and Mexicans in particular, faced widespread racism and discrimination. The writers, editorial board members, and political figures making these arguments routinely drew parallels between immigration enforcement efforts and the South’s historic commitment to racial inequality, Jim Crow, and segregation. For example, in a column focused on immigration, Sid Salter of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger dispelled common myths about Latino immigrants and argued, “Now that a measure of progress has been made in race relations between blacks and whites in Mississippi, it seems some among us are encouraging new avenues for racism and bigotry, and adding a side order of misplaced nationalism” (Salter 2003). Another article in the same newspaper quoted Bill Chandler, a Mississippi immigration advocate, as saying, “[Anti-L atino racism] is the same kind of racism that has been perpetuated against African Americans for years” (Crisp 2010). Time-series data show that these two racializing arguments (that of Latino criminality on one hand and of racial discrimination on the other) are not independent of each other. As figure 4 shows, these arguments about racism and discrimination rise and fall in tandem with criminality assertions. More specifically, both Latino criminality and racial discrimination claims rise and then decline from 2004 to 2006. Criminalization arguments rise again in 2007, followed closely by a steep increase of racial discrimination arguments the following year. This parallel relationship continues throughout the period of analysis—declining slowly after 2007, rising again between 2010 and 2012, and declining steeply through to 2013. Although these claims rise and fall concurrently, our data suggest that different actors make each argument. News stories highlighting the criminality of Mexicans and Latinos most commonly quoted state and local government officials, whereas those focused on racism and discrimination relied most often on reports from representatives from advocacy r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �130 Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities and nonprofit organizations that serve local immigrants. Taken together, these trends suggest an ongoing and multifaceted cycle of raciali zation in which elected and appointed government officials challenge Latino or Mexican immigrants as criminal elements, and immigration advocates respond with charges of racism and discrimination. As counterpoints to racializing claims of Latino immigrant criminality, publishers choose to feed this racialization by citing claims of Latino-targeted racism and discrimination. Although these two discourses have different implications and goals, both are “racial projects” that construct, emphasize, and give primacy to racial distinctions between Latinos and other groups (Omi and Winant 1994). A fr ica n A m e r ic a n N e w s pa p e r s Do the same patterns present in African American newspapers in the region? To answer this question, we turn to results from our content analysis of immigration-related stories published in four African American newspapers. Slightly different patterns are evident. First, although positive and negative characterizations of immigrants appeared at the relatively same frequency in the mainstream newspapers (31 percent and 29 percent, respectively), African American newspapers portrayed immigrants in strikingly more positive terms. African American newspapers published more than twice as many positive characterizations of immigrants than negative. Approximately 15 percent of stories in the database contained at least one negative characterization versus 33 percent containing positive characterizations. Although the balance of positive and negative characterizations differed from the mainstream press, the content of immigration characterizations was quite similar. As in the mainstream press, the most common negative characterization of immigrants was the argument that immigrants perpetuate crime. Negative arguments made up only 15 percent of the total stories, but nearly 60 percent of the negative arguments about im migrants in African American newspapers involved judgments about immigrants’ involvement in criminal activities or their criminal dispositions. For instance, the Birmingham Times published a story in 2010 that reported on the criminal dealings of local Mexican immigrants: A federal grand jury today indicted two undocumented aliens for providing counterfeit identification documents, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance and Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Resident Agent in Charge Jesse Blakeman. The indictment filed in U.S. District Court charges Adalberto de la Cruz-Angeles, 42, a Mexican citizen, with two counts of transferring counterfeit Social Security and Permanent Resident cards, once in July and once in November. (Birmingham Times 2010) Although the African American papers focused on the supposed criminal tendencies and behaviors of immigrants, they differed from the mainstream papers in their secondary focus on immigrants as an economic burden. The claim that immigrants steal jobs appeared in approximately 39 percent of the articles that negatively characterized immigrants. Assertions that immigrants drain collective resources appeared in 21 percent. These articles typically asserted that immigrants drained public coffers by virtue of their overrepresentation in local prisons, their mental and physical health issues, and their reliance on various welfare programs. These claims echo popular arguments that African Americans see immigrants, particularly Latinos, as their direct competition for resources and employment (McClain et al. 2006). Rather than appearing as a dominant narrative in the African American press, however, these arguments represented only a small proportion of the total articles in the newspapers under study. The economic threat claims were also concentrated in the early years of our sample, peaking in 2006 and tapering off by 2008 (see figure 5). Despite commonly made claims about conflict between Latinos and African Americans, our results reveal that positive characterizations of immigrants, Latinos in particular, far outpaced negative ones in the African American press. Consider the following excerpt from the Atlanta Daily World in 2006. The author of the article included a quote from a nationally re- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 131 Figure 5. Steal Jobs Claims by Year in African American Newspapers 0.35 0.30 Proportion 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Source: Authors’ calculations. nowned Latino advocacy group to advocate for humane immigrant policies: “Undocumented immigrants contribute about $850 billion more per year than they cost—a huge net gain for the United States,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citzens. “It’s about time that we provide a legal avenue for them to come here in recognition of their tremendous contributions to our country” (Curry 2006). The article not only emphasized the positive economic contributions of immigrants, it also advocated for policies that would facilitate authorized immigration to the United States. Although such arguments were common in African American papers, by far the most common defense of immigrants offered in the African American newspapers asserted that immigrants face discrimination or racism. Racism- discrimination claims constituted approximately 50 percent of all positive immigrant characterizations in the mainstream papers and higher than 70 percent in African American papers. An article from the Jackson Advocate illustrates these claims in its discussion of law enforcement and motorists. Quoting a local immigrant advocate, the article argued, “The past reports of ‘driving while black’ have been supplemented with accounts today of ‘driving while brown’. . . with the new focus being on Latino immigrants” (Vern 2010). This quote illustrates not only the common trend in black papers to argue that immigrants face racism but also the parallel trend of equating black- targeted discrimination with discrimination targeting Latino immigrants. So common were references to racism and discrimination in this dataset that these claims dwarfed other two most commonly occurring positive characterizations: of immigrants as hard workers (22 percent) and of immigrants as contributing to the public good (17 percent). As in the mainstream press, racism and crime claims rise and fall in tandem over the study period, spiking concurrently in 2006, 2010, and 2013 (see figure 6). Results from the African American newspapers also reveal distinct trends in the racial labels used in immigration-related news stories, particularly when compared to the mainstream press. Whereas 30 percent of mainstream newspaper articles used at least one racial descriptor in their coverage of immigration, 67 percent of articles from African American newspapers used at least one racial descriptor. The most commonly used racial category was African American–black (87 percent), followed by Latino-Hispanic (nearly 54 percent of all racial labels applied versus 80 percent in mainstream newspapers). These findings suggest that though immigration coverage focuses on Latinos in both venues, African American newspapers are far more likely than mainstream newspapers to also discuss immigration as it affects or connects to African American communities. To assess African American press descriptions of Latino immigrants, we examined the application of negative and positive characterizations of Latino immigrants. Characterizations of immigrants as criminal were the majority (73 percent) of negative characterizations, r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities 132 Figure 6. Racism and Crime Claims by Year in African American Newspapers 0.45 Racism 0.40 Crime 0.35 Proportion 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Source: Authors’ calculations. followed distantly by the claim that Latino immigrants drain collective resources (27 percent). These patterns indicate that the dual racialization of Latinos as criminals and as victims of racism and discrimination appears in the African American as well as the mainstream press. The same time-series patterns from the mainstream press also arise in African American newspapers. Like in the mainstream press, the racialized arguments about Latino criminality and anti-Latino racism rise and fall in tandem, again suggesting a pattern in which immigration foes attack Latinos on the basis of perceived criminal tendencies and advocates respond with targeted claims of Latino immigrants facing racism and discrimination. The key difference between the mainstream and African American newspapers involves the prevalence of each argument and the timing of shifts in each argument. In the mainstream newspapers, criminality claims occur more frequently than racism claims in all but one year of the dataset (2012).12 And, as noted, in the African American press, racism arguments surpass criminality arguments in 2008 and remain more frequent through the end of our analysis period. Coupled with the fact that the African American press offered more positive than negative characterizations of immigrants than did the mainstream press, these trends may evidence broader shifts in black-Latino relations in the South over the last decade and a half. As figure 7 makes clear, over the period of study, articles about Latinos became less likely to invoke negative characterizations of immigrants over time. The opposite pattern holds for positive portrayals, trending broadly upward after 2005. These patterns are specific to the African American newspapers. Mainstream newspaper articles about Latinos show slight declines in both positive and negative characterizations of immigrants during the study period. Time- series data indicates that characterizations of immigrants as criminal, followed by stealing jobs, diminish over time, and are less prominent than in the mainstream press, suggesting a shift in public discourse about black-Latino relations over the last decade and a half, characterized by increasingly positive characterizations of Latino immigrants as they increased in size and visibility across the region.13 12. This year marked widespread state and national-level attention to anti-immigration laws such as Alabama’s HB56. Critics of these bills regularly cited them as evidence of racism and discrimination targeted at immigrants (Brown, Jones, and Dow 2016; Campbell 2016; Mohl 2016). 13. In the last years of our data, crime and racism claims also follow different patterns in the two data sets, both claims trending upward in the African American press and downward in the mainstream press. Our close read of the stories from these years does not suggest that these shifts were event driven. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts 133 Figure 7. Co-occurrence of Positive and Negative Claims and Latino or Hispanic by Year in African American Newspapers 0.35 Negative Positive 0.30 Proportion 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Source: Authors’ calculations. Di s c u s s i o n a n d C o n c lu s i o n In both the mainstream press and African American press, results indicate that since 2003 immigration discourse in Southern news media has crystallized around two themes: the criminality of Latino immigrants and the discriminatory treatment these immigrants face. Across both sets of newspapers, negative arguments about Latinos focus on their perceived criminal tendencies rather than characterizing immigrants as labor market competitors or economic threats. These claims arise in stories reporting disproportionately on Latinos under investigation for possible criminal offenses, suggesting the prominence of a racial threat narrative centered on public safety. These same characterizations also appear in news coverage about gang activity and in stories claiming that undocumented Latinos are criminals, by virtue of nothing more than their mere presence in the United States. Paralleling this criminality argument is the equally common claim that Latinos face mounting racism and discrimination akin to that African Americans face. That these trends are particularly pronounced for stories about Latinos and Hispanics (versus stories about Mexicans) further illustrates the racializing effects of these narratives. These trends appeared in both the mainstream and the African American press, with one important difference. Pieces in the African American press were far more positive toward immigrants rel- ative to the mainstream press. These findings cast doubt on claims that Latinos in the region are assimilating into whiteness or occupying an elevated position in the racial hierarchy. Our findings indicate key similarities between the racialization of Latinos and that of African Americans. The criminality claims that appear in our data are similar to patterns of media-driven racialization of African Americans in at least three respects: they emphasize Latinos as dangerous outsiders, assume inherent criminal tendencies among Latinos, and overrepresent the proportion of crimes committed by this demographic group (Alexander 2012; Mendelberg 2001; Dixon and Linz 2000a). The central difference between constructions of black criminality and of Latino criminality in our data is the emphasis on Latino illegality as evidence of criminality. There is, to our knowledge, no corresponding narrative about black illegality in the media; however, definitions of criminal and illegal are elastic (Gilroy 2008). Unauthorized presence in the United States is not a criminal violation but rather an administrative one. The assumption that unauthorized presence is somehow criminal is a social construction, and historical immigration debates in the United States have not always equated unauthorized presence with criminality (Ngai 2005). A key finding from our study is that the news media in our sample choose to portray illegality as reflective of criminality ten- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �134 Immigr ation a nd Ch a nging Iden tities dencies inherent to Latino immigrants rather opting to portray illegal presence as an administrative, human rights, or legal-bureaucratic issue. This choice is similar to constructions of black criminality that have long been used to demonize African Americans as unfit for legal, social, and other forms of citizenship (James 2010). In our data, the constructions of Latino illegality as criminality do the same work. Our findings not only indicate similarities in the racialization of African Americans and Latinos, they also suggest that black political leaders and cultural elites perceive Latinos as sharing a common experience of racial discrimination at the hands of whites. The pronounced emphasis on anti-Latino discrimination in the African American press may be coincidental, but taken alongside new work on black-Latino alliances (Brown, Jones, and Dow 2016) and shifts in black elite public opinion (Williams and Hannon 2016) it may also reflect a strategic choice to shore up a sense of shared minority status between African Americans and Latinos. Although characterizations of Latinos as victims of discrimination and racism may spur alliances between minority groups, such claims may also feed a sense of racial threat among whites by emphasizing the challenges of Latino immigration to existing resource distributions. Regardless of the intent and consequences, these patterns indicate that media-driven racialization occurs through both negative characterizations of specific racial groups and through positive defensive pro-immigrant claims. As a counterpoint to the heightened racialization of Latinos as criminals, newspaper editors and journalists choose to publish stories that defend immigrants as the targets of racism and discrimination. In the latter instance, racialization may serve as a defensive resource, in which advocacy efforts draw on histories of civil rights activism to make their case. These results suggest that to make sense of the racially transformative effects of immigration requires a nuanced understanding of the racialization process. Existing research largely emphasizes explicit patterns of immigrant racial self-identification and state ascription. This focus neglects the effects that pro- immigration forces, meso-level organizations, and implicit racial appeals have on immigrants’ place in and adjustment to U.S. racial hierarchies. Although our use of the term racialization refers to discursive constructions, these discourses are meaningful in a racialized social system, characterized by systemic inequalities and the primacy of racial hierarchies and divisions (Bonilla-Silva 1997). As a result, these racialized appeals likely have important consequences for immigrant-native relations. Efforts to frame immigrants positively as racialized minorities and victims of discrimination serve different purposes and may even serve different purposes for different groups. In the case of nonwhites, the framing of Latino immigrants as racialized minorities and targets of discrimination may spur interminority sympathies and intergroup coalitions, particularly in the U.S. South, where civil rights organizations and language have unique political visibility. Collaborative efforts by civil rights organizations, immigrant rights organizations, and African American representatives to pass sanctuary city ordinances in Jackson, Mississippi, and Birmingham, Alabama, may be evidence of such effects. Such efforts may also stimulate a sense of threat among whites (see also Schildkraut and Marotta 2018; Craig and Richeson 2018) and may yield renewed local and state immigration enforcement. Because these results are regional rather than constitutive of a single case, they have significant implications for the context of reception facing new immigrants. In using normative racial codes to situate Latino immigrants in relation to existing groups (Padín 2005), media not only discursively situate Latinos as most similar to blacks but also shape the patterns by which community and local level bureaucrats will extend access to services and social resources on the one hand, or engage in punitive behaviors on the other. In establishing the parameters by which Latinos are situated and understood in Southern communities, media discourses may play a significant role in shaping mobility opportunities for Latinos. A lingering question from this study involves the discursive tropes used by the Spanish-language press to characterize Latino immigrants in the region. Given our interest in ascriptive processes of ra- r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms �t he r aci a liz at ion of l at ino immigr a n ts cialization, this article focuses only on English- language sources. Further, at the time of our analysis and writing, Spanish-language media in the South was unavailable in digitized news databases. Future analyses of Spanish-language media in the region would provide a more detailed analysis of shifts in Latino racial identity, racialization, and incorporation during this period. Media racialization of Latinos may affect Latino identities, producing new in-group meanings, boundaries, and political mobilization. A sense of proximity to blackness may play a significant role in shoring up a sense of Latino identity (Jones 2012; Sanchez 2008). This shared sense of group position can serve as a basis for political coalitions with long-term implications (Kaufmann 2003). Still, our results may reflect racialization processes particular to the South. Indeed, the often contradictory conclusions about the location of Latinos in the U.S. racial hierarchy may reflect regional differences in racialization and racial hierarchies. Greater attention to place-based variation in immigrant racialization will illuminate the mechanisms of Latino racialization across contexts. 135 Birmingham Times. 2010. “Undocumented Aliens Indicted for Transferring Counterfeit Documents.” Birmingham Times. December 1. Bloemraad, Irene, Fabiana Silva, and Kim Voss. 2016. “Rights, Economics, or Family? Frame Resonance, Political Ideology, and the Immigrant Rights Movement.” Social Forces 94(4): 1647– 74. 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Lan- Wilson, Thomas C. 2001. “Americans’ Views on Im- ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. r sf: t he russell sage f ou n dat ion jou r na l of t he so ci a l sciences This content downloaded from 129.210.115.230 on Fri, 04 Mar 2022 02:00:00 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Racialization of Latino Immigrants in New Destinations: Criminality, Ascription, and Countermobilization Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brown, Hana, E Jones, Jennifer, A Becker, Andrea Subject The topic of the resource Latino Immigration Race and Equality Description An account of the resource This article analyzes patterns in Latino immigrant racialization in the U.S. South. Drawing on a unique dataset of more than 4,200 news stories from the region, we find that Latino immigrants face multifaceted racialization in the news media and that this racialization shares substantive similarities with African American racialization processes. The most dominant negative characterizations of Mexican and Latino immigrants focus on their perceived criminal tendencies. Claims of Latino criminality apply implicitly coded racial language about black criminality to new Latino arrivals. A close qualitative analysis of these trends reveals an ongoing cycle of racialization in which immigration foes challenge Latino or Mexican immigrants as criminal elements and immigration advocates respond with charges of racism and discrimination. Supplemental analyses from four African American newspapers suggest that black elites perceive Latinos as sharing a common experience of racial discrimination at the hands of whites. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018–8 Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Journal Article Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.5.06 Language A language of the resource English