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In Brief

• Systems of education and care and the Latinx immigrant families they serve are harmed by anti-immigrant policies and laws, which stymy ecosystemic resilience.
• Community-based participatory research approaches can be effective in connecting immigrant communities and researchers in order to drive change.
• Examples of research-based, community-driven action steps highlight local policy and practice changes.

Families from Mexico and Central America who immigrate to the United States often make that difficult decision in the context of political and economic corruption, entrenched poverty, and/or threats to individual and family safety (Capps, 2016; Lesser & Batalova, 2017). In search of a better life, immigrants leave behind family members and friends, community networks, possessions, cultural traditions, and their homes. In making the decision to move to the United States, Latinx immigrants reveal their courage, resolve, and resilience in leaving behind what they treasure in order to ensure their family’s survival and future welfare.

Because of immigration laws and economic policies that control global immigration flows (e.g., who can and cannot legally enter which country), immigrants with the scarcest of resources make the journey northward with few legal protections or rights (Dreby, 2015; Vogt, 2013). The journey exposes many immigrants to family separation and danger (e.g., violence, extortion, kidnapping, sexual assault) that can be traumatizing and life threatening. In a recent study, we found that Central American immigrant mothers in the United States experienced immigration-related post-traumatic stress and depression symptoms in the range for clinical concern (Letiecq et al., 2019). Others have found that children of immigrant parents likewise can suffer from traumatic exposures that can interfere with school performance and health outcomes (Torres, Santiago, Walts, & Richards, 2018; Vesely, Bravo, & Guzzardo, 2019).

As they settle in the United States, Latinx immigrant families can face significant pressures to acculturate and be self-sufficient. Immigrants are expected to become proficient in English, find stable housing and employment, and meet the needs of their families while simultaneously enduring uncertainties and coping with significant stressors (Glick, 2010). Because of immigration and health-care laws and policies, many immigrants are not eligible for health insurance, housing supports, or food assistance. Those who seek health care or other services may find few to no affordable services available. Such services may also lack critical language supports (e.g., translators, interpreters) and cultural competence to meet diverse familial needs.

Immigrant families, and especially those families with undocumented members, must also contend with complex federal immigration laws and programs that regulate, marginalize, and even threaten their lives (Vesely, Letiecq, & Goodman, 2017). Immigration policies focused on securing borders, separating families, detaining/incarcerating, and deporting undocumented immigrants, denying asylum petitioners from U.S. entry, and denying immigrants and their children access to resources increasingly create unsafe situations for immigrant families (American Public Health Association, 2009; Menjívar & Abrego, 2012; Vesely et al., 2019).

It is in this context that we share our efforts to build a community-based participatory research (CBPR) program in partnership with Latinx immigrant families. The goals of our partnership are to advance systems change to promote ecosystemic resilience and immigrant family health. In this article, we discuss the ecosystemic resilience framework and our approach to CBPR. We conclude with examples of our research-based, community-driven advocacy to change local policies and systems of care serving immigrant families.

Shifting the Burden of Resilience: From Individual and Family to Ecosystemic

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, to be gritty (Waller, 2001). As a concept, resilience has been critiqued as focused too narrowly on individual (and familial) adjustment and adaptation to stress and crises (Harvey, 2007; Ungar, 2011). This narrow focus places the burden to be resilient squarely on individuals and families while ignoring the structural and systematic roots of many struggles. Immigrant family functioning and health must be understood in the context of broader, sociopolitical challenges and structural oppression (e.g., anti-immigrant laws and policies, political corruption, economic instability, institutional racism) that erode resilience processes.

Scholars of ecosystemic resilience recognize that individual and family resilience processes can be facilitated or stymied by larger forces (e.g., policies, laws) that are generally beyond their control (Ungar, 2011; Waller, 2001; Walsh, 2015). This frame recognizes that not all families are treated the same under the law and therefore do not have the same opportunities and advantages to build resilience when faced with stressors or crises (Letiecq, 2019). To place families in their ecosystemic context, Ungar (2011) suggests that we locate them within their social, cultural, historical, and policy milieus. An ecosystemic resilience frame first asks, What is the context of the individuals and families we wish to serve?

Putting an Ecosystemic Resilience Framework Into Practice

It is from an ecosystemic resilience perspective that we began implementing a CBPR approach in partnership with undocumented and mixed-status Latinx immigrant families, mainly from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala (Vesely et al., 2017). A CBPR approach is not a method but an orientation to research that is community driven, highly collaborative, and based on a partnership between community members who are working to solve challenges confronting them and university researchers who are committed to researching and supporting the community’s goals (Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler, 2018). Importantly, CBPR also includes an action agenda (Reason & Bradbury, 2008).

The current CBPR project began in 2014, when Letiecq, Vesely, and Goodman (university researchers) were invited by Leyva, a bilingual local school official, to attend a support group with 10 Latina immigrant mothers. At the meeting, we discussed the potential for a CBPR project, and the mothers agreed to form a community–university partnership. As a collective, we established a community advisory board (CAB) called Amigas de la Comunidad (Friends of the Community). The CAB included the 10 women (the “amigas”), Leyva, the university researchers, and a bilingual local community organizer (coauthor Marquez). We established strategic partnerships with agencies serving immigrant families (e.g., local schools, a health clinic, immigration attorneys). Meeting biweekly, the CAB developed a research and action agenda. Below, we highlight several action steps we have taken to advance systems change and ecosystemic resilience.

Working in Partnership With Latinx Immigrant Families

To understand the education and care needs and desired systems changes of the local Latinx immigrant community, Letiecq and Marquez conducted in-depth interviews and interviewer-assisted surveys (Letiecq et al., 2019; Vesely et al., 2017). Data were analyzed and discussed in CAB meetings and CAB members shared study findings with the larger community to determine an action agenda. Although CAB membership has changed over time, we have repeated this community-based research-to-action process to guide our work.

Removing Barriers in Education and Care: Form Aid

One of the initial CAB-identified community needs was assistance in completing forms, especially school forms related to registering children in school. Many families said the forms and processes for enrolling children in grades prekindergarten through 12th grade were confusing, overly complicated, and a barrier to service access. Form completion was exacerbated by language challenges. To remove this service barrier, Amigas organized a “form aid” registration fair, which was cofacilitated by Leyva and included the school nurse, health professionals, and developmental specialists. Because of Amigas’ community outreach, some particularly vulnerable families attended the event and were connected to services for the first time. There were families whose children had never been seen by a doctor—one child was 4 years old. Children with developmental delays were able to receive developmental screenings. The success of this event inspired the school to continue conducting community-based enrollment processes.

Identifying Family Reunification in the Schools

Our research and engagement with community members also revealed that the needs of newly arrived children who had experienced family separation were going unaddressed (Goodman, Letiecq, Vesely, Marquez, & Leyva, 2017). At the time, the school did not have a mechanism for identifying children who were reunifying with their families in order to address as soon as possible the acute needs of children experiencing stress, trauma, and conflict related to family separation and reunification. As such, Amigas worked with the school system to revise the intake form to identify reunifying children. This allowed the school system to proactively provide services to these students and families, thereby mitigating stressors such as grief and feelings of abandonment.

Connecting Immigrant Families with Decision Makers

Finally, the CAB worked to educate and sensitize school leaders (e.g., principals, social workers) to the Latinx immigrant community context and their needs and family goals. For example, our research documented the overcrowded living conditions experienced by many immigrants and their adaptation strategies (Vesely et al., 2019). The CAB identified where school policies and practices were misaligned with the realities of immigrant family life, preventing some families from fully engaging with the educational system. To advocate for change, the CAB held several meetings with school officials, including the superintendent, that focused on how the community would like to engage with the schools to support their children’s education and address the barriers they experience within the educational system. Over time, school officials and local city officials reached out to Amigas to glean their insights about service-delivery systems.

Resistance to Family Separation, Detention, and Deportation

Although we have focused most pointedly on our work with local schools, our research also found that undocumented immigrants and mixed-status families were fearful of family separation, detention, and deportation (Vesely et al., 2017). Indeed, community members articulated the importance of mitigating the impacts of immigration raids and the threat of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. To that end, our CBPR work turned to facilitating workshops with immigration attorneys and providing information to community members related to their rights and legal protections for their children in the event of detention or deportation. This work exemplifies Amigas’ desire to protect and care for one another and to prevent (further) community harms. Indeed, they demonstrate the strength, resilience, and determination of the Latinx immigrant community in the face of structural oppression.

Implications

By highlighting Latinx immigrant family life in context and our collective efforts to advance systems change, we hope to shine light on the need for family researchers and practitioners to move beyond individual and familial resilience building to consider ecosystemic resilience. We must shift the burden of resilience to the systems of care established to serve all children and their families in the United States. If immigrant families are not faring well, it is likely not because they lack resilience but rather because the systems of care that are serving them lack resilience and the ability to overcome challenges promulgated by anti-immigration policies and laws. Together, immigrant families, researchers, and practitioners can work in common cause to make a difference, to build resilience ecosystemically. Importantly, immigrant families can and should drive this work.

Bethany L. Letiecq, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Science, George Mason University; Krishna J. Leyva, M.S.W., Manager, Family and Community Engagement, Alexandria City Public Schools; Marlene G. Marquez, M.S.W., Human Services Specialist, City of Alexandria Department of Community and Human Services; Colleen K. Vesely, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Early Childhood Education and Human Development and Family Science, George Mason University; and Rachael D. Goodman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Counseling and Development, George Mason University
 

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