Social Networks, Wellbeing and Responses to Shifts in Immigration Policy and Practice

Description:
Massive-scale global agents of change such as urbanization, migration, and socio-political reorganization tend to increase inequalities at the local level. This project asks: How does the reorganization of people's social networks, triggered by these large-scale adjustments, explain the shaping of such vulnerabilities on the ground? What factors allow social networks to ameliorate as well as create risks? This research examines how a substantive shift in U.S. immigration policy ripples through social networks to impact the wellbeing of households and individuals, particularly as it impacts their food security and nutritional health (overweight, under-nutrition). Our focus is on Latino families living in low-income neighborhoods in south-central Phoenix, a community particularly vulnerable to such macro-level shifts. We are collecting household and family member data using approaches from anthropology, human biology, environmental studies, nutrition, sociology and demography, and will then model mathematically how adjustments in household arrangements related to changes in immigration policy and practice are changing the resources that people can draw on to feed their families, stay healthy and create stable home lives. A central question is whether recent atmospheric changes in immigration sentiment, ostensibly targeting undocumented migrants, might unintendedly affect the wellbeing of a much larger set of people, including citizens (many of whom are children).