Racialization of Latinos and Implications for Health Following September 11th: Findings From a Northern Border Community.

Abstract

Few studies have investigated the health implications of post-9/11 restrictive immigration policies, practices, and sentiments for Latinos living in northern border communities. This dissertation examines implications of this environment for the health for Latinos in Detroit, MI. First, I examined experiences of first, 1.5, and second generation Mexican and Central American women with racialization processes. Second, I examined women’s responses to racialization and pathways through which these experiences may be associated with health. Third, drawing on data from the Healthy Environments Partnership surveys, 2002 and 2008, I examined changes in everyday and acute unfair treatment by race and ethnicity for 219 Detroit adults. I tested the association of these changes in discrimination with blood pressure. The first analysis suggests that women navigated dynamic racialization processes. Their descriptions depict social agents engaged in unequal interactions with women, and with members of their social networks, in domains in which they had power. Social statuses and the contexts in which racialization occurred shaped women’s experiences with these processes and influenced their access to social and economic resources. Results from the second analysis suggested that women’s responses to racialization were contingent upon the resources on which they could draw to prevent, mitigate, or resist these processes. Implications for health are multifaceted and apparent in multiple life domains. The third analysis found that Latinos reported significantly greater increases in lifetime acute unfair treatment, but not everyday or acute unfair treatment in the past year, compared to non-Latino whites (NLWs). Changes in lifetime acute unfair treatment were not associated with differential changes in blood pressure for Latinos relative to NLWs. In models restricted to Latinos, change in lifetime acute unfair treatment was positively associated with blood pressure, suggesting that these experiences manifest in a short time period (6 years) in compromised health. Together, these results suggest that Latinos have encountered increasing discrimination over the past decade, that these changes are associated with restrictions in access to resources that are essential to health, and with objective indicators of health. Multilevel interventions and policies that support the full inclusion of Latinos will promote health and health equity.