LatinXperts

The official podcast of Latino Studies at UT

LatinXperts

citizenship

Episode 21 – How do mixed-status families cope with politics, racism, and precarity?

In this episode, Karma Chávez interviews Dr. Carmen R. Valdez about her longitudinal research on mixed-status families.

Dr. Carmen R. Valdez discusses an article she published in the journal, Family Process, which looked at how Mexican immigrant adults and their children reacted emotionally to the events leading to the 2016 election. She explains why studying mixed-status Latino families is important and how their stresses differ from those families in which everyone shares the same immigration or citizenship status. She also insists that while it is important to understand the precarity and stress these families face, it is equally significant to emphasize the ways that these families can continue to thrive.

Resources / Related Links:

Learn more about Carmen Valdez, Ph.D.

Emotional Reactions and Coping of Mexican Mixed-Status Immigrant Families in Anticipation of the 2016 Presidential Election

Episode 003 – How does anti-black racism keep police violence from being seen as a Latinx issue?

The history of Latinx people in the United States is one marked by criminalization and police violence, yet efforts to address police brutality and repression are seldom understood as “Latinx issues.” How does anti-black racism and assimilationist tendencies within mainstream Latinx politics and media downplay the problem of police violence? How can a focus on questions of policing help us think about issues of racial difference, citizenship, and solidarity within Latinx communities?

Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. 
Aaron G. Fountain, Jr. is a Ph.D. Candidate at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He has done freelance writing for Al Jazeera America, Latino Rebels, Black Perspectives, The Hill, Medium, and others.

Marisol LeBrón
Marisol LeBrón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latino/a Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance, in Puerto Rico and co-author, along with Yarimar Bonilla, of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. She is currently completing a short bilingual book entitled, Against Muerto Rico: Lessons from the Verano Boricua, about how Puerto Ricans are resisting colonialism and fighting to foster a life-affirming future for the archipelago.

Additional resources:
 
Latinx Narratives on Police Brutality, Respectability Politics, and Historical Erasure
 
Riot Shaming by Latinos Needs to Stop
 
Forgotten Latino Urban Riots and Why They Can Happen Again
 
Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness
 
Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD