Abstract
This article explores the effect of an undocumented status in shaping narratives of resilience, emotional expression and maternal sentiment among undocumented Mexican mothers in the United States. Given the dominant narrative of maternal responsibility that I encountered while conducting ethnographic research among undocumented women in Houston, Texas, this work focuses on the cultural construction and narrative use of maternal sentiment as it is expressed in relation to the health practices and overall forms of survival and resilience of undocumented Mexican mothers and their children.
Resúmen
Este artículo explora el efecto del estatus indocumentado en la formación de las narrativas de resiliencia, expresión emocional y sentimiento maternal entre las madres mexicanas indocumentadas en los Estados Unidos. Dada la narrativa dominante de responsabilidad materna que encontré durante mis investigaciones etnográficas con mujeres indocumentadas en Houston, Texas, este trabajo se enfoca en la construcción cultural y el uso narrativo del sentimiento maternal según expresado con relación a las prácticas de salud y las formas generales de sobrevivencia y resistencia de las madres mexicanas indocumentadas y sus hijos.
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Notes
All personal names are coded as pseudonyms to protect identity and legal status.
In 2012, the Pew Research Center estimated that four million undocumented immigrant parents, or 38% of adults in this population, had been living in the United States for a median of 15 years and lived with their US-born children, either minors or adults.
Of course, not all health policies are determined solely by federal policy. In some cases, such as in the determination of Medicaid and CHIP, states retain autonomy in the management of these programs, although, in Texas, undocumented immigrants are still excluded from access to Medicaid and CHIP. In Texas, pregnant women, regardless of immigration status, have access to CHIP Perinatal, health assistance for their unborn child. This health access, however, is specifically provided to the unborn citizen child, not to the mother. In this case the mother, as an undocumented immigrant, continues to be excluded. In other cases, states administer local health programs, such as the Harris Health Financial Assistance Program (HHFAP) in Houston, which is largely funded by local property taxes.
Texas Medical Association, “The Uninsured in Texas,” https://www.texmed.org/Uninsured_in_Texas/.
Markian Hawryluk, “Ben Taub ‘Under Assault’ as Funds from Many Sources Cut, Threatened,” Houston Chronicle, 6 June 2015, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/health/article/Ben-Taub-under-assault-as-funds-from-many-6310020.php.
This research was approved by the University of Houston Institutional Review Board. Clinic names are specifically excluded and generalized as “FQHC” or “community clinic” to protect patient privacy and to protect the services that these clinics provide to undocumented immigrant patients.
Before I even began interviewing undocumented immigrants, I needed to understand the larger public health structure in Houston. I interviewed physicians and community health workers (CHWs). I even underwent a 160 hours community health worker training as a way to learn the public health practices and discourses that community health centers used to interact with uninsured and undocumented patients. The training put me in contact with health-care representatives across the city, including representatives from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission: Center for Elimination of Disproportionality and Disparities, the Mexican Consulate’s Ventanilla de Salud, and the National Latina Institute of Reproductive Health (NLIRH) in Texas. CHW training is available to anyone who is interested. I underwent the training as part of the process of learning the bureaucratic structure of public health care in Houston. The leaders of the abovementioned organizations are important figures I was able to interview thanks to referrals from CHW students and teachers. I did not volunteer or work for any of these organizations.
As I always do, I introduced myself at the beginning of each forum as a university researcher studying health access for undocumented communities. I specified that people were invited to these meetings to share their thoughts, experiences, concerns, and questions related to health access in Houston. The meetings were described as “forums” specifically because I wanted people’s discussions and concerns to lead the conversation. Consent was taken verbally at the beginning of each forum, and while no one who showed up was denied participation, no one would have been excluded from participation.
Chicano/a studies scholars have extensively documented Mexican and Mexican-American generational resilience and resistance within social and political structures of oppression in education (San Miguel 2001; Villenas 2001; Fernandez 2012), labor and political participation (Dickerson 2006; Straut-Eppsteiner 2016), and even in culture and belonging, where Mexicans and Mexican Americans have resisted language hierarchies Anzaldua 1987) and family separation (Rosas 2014; among many other forms of social/cultural alienation; health is no different. For example, Lira and Stern argue that just as Mexican-origin women were targeted in eugenic reproductive violence in twentieth-century California, so too were the “parents of Mexican-origin patients… among the most active in resisting state-sanctioned sterilization, opposing the operations on the grounds of family integrity, reproductive autonomy, and civil rights” (2014, p. 11). Elena Gutierrez also documents women’s experiences, resistance, and emotional responses to forced sterilization in her seminal book Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women’s Reproduction (2008), as well as in her scholarly contribution to the PBS documentary No Mas Bebes Por Vida. The scholarship of Alexandra Minna Stern and historian Virginia Espino also contributed to this important documentary.
The presidential election marked a major political shift in my fieldwork. Generally all of my clinic interviews took place between 2014 and 2016, during the initial rollout of the ACA and prior to Donald Trump’s election; the community forums took place in mid-2017, after the election.
All of the women present that day were members of the United Methodist Church; they were all Mexican, undocumented, and uninsured, with children of mixed immigration status.
Building from Ngai’s (2004) classic work on the production of illegality as a political status, Leo Chavez (2008, 2017) develops the concept of the “Latino threat” to talk about the ways in which Latinos as a whole, but especially Mexicans—in so much as media and public policy discourses have depended on years of anti-Mexican “reconquista” rhetoric—have been historically perceived and treated as a national security threat.
CHIP is federal insurance program administered at the state level. Children in Texas without health insurance may be eligible for low-cost or free health coverage either from CHIP or Children’s Medicaid. Both programs cover office visits, prescription drugs, dental care, eye exams, glasses, and so on. See https://chipmedicaid.org/en/About. Undocumented children are not eligible for CHIP or Children’s Medicaid in Texas.
Marta’s full narrative is documented and discussed in more detail in a forthcoming publication.
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Acknowledgements
This research was initiated thanks to support from the Center for Mexican–American Studies (CMAS) at the University of Houston, first through a visiting scholar position in 2015 and then through a Faculty Seed Grant in 2016. Several faculty at the University of Houston offered critical feedback to earlier versions of this paper; I would like to thank Christina Sisk, Amanda Ellis, and Tatcho Mindiola for engaging earlier versions of this work and offering important feedback. Additionally, I am thankful for the editorial labor and insights of the two anonymous reviewers that reviewed this article for the journal.
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Farfán-Santos, E. The politics of resilience and resistance: Health care access and undocumented Mexican motherhood in the United States. Lat Stud 17, 67–85 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-00162-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-00162-y
Keywords
- Latina health
- Immigrant health care access
- Motherhood
- Undocumented communities
- Resilience and resistance