War, famine, economic instability, climate change. These are just a few of the many reasons people choose to leave their homes and seek better futures elsewhere. According to the United Nations Population Division, immigration is predicted to be the main driver of population growth in more than 50 countries through 2054.  

But beyond the many reasons why and where people choose to immigrate, it’s important to understand the effects of such a decision on the mental health of both the people leaving for distant shores and those who remain behind. 

Kristin Yarris, associate professor of global studies and women's, gender, and sexuality studies, has been conducting research at the nexus between immigrant rights and health equity for more than a decade, beginning with her first book, “Care Across Generations: Solidarity and Sacrifice in Transnational Families.” From her research on the physical and mental toll experienced by caregivers of children whose parents left Nicaragua to immigrate to the US to her present work in local community organizing, Yarris’s work comes from a deep personal commitment to serving the broader public. 

The Costs of Care 

“Care Across Generations” focused on the role of grandmothers raising children after parents out-migrated from Nicaragua. Specifically, the book examined childrearing in the context of the uncertainties of migration and displacement for the entire family. A medical anthropologist by training, Yarris noticed during her ethnography—the study of people in their own environments through observation and face-to-face interviews—that the women she encountered embodied the mental and physical stress they were experiencing.  

“There’s a local idiom in Nicaragua, dolor de los huesos—pain so deep it’s felt in the bones,” Yarris said. “The absence of their daughters or sons created an absence that was something they felt and expressed psychosomatically. They experience headaches and other pains. This distress of body and mind acts as a container for broader cultural transformations.”  

Yarris notes that ethnographic research, with its focus on lived experience, is a window into how societies respond to massive changes, whether political, cultural, or climatic. Human experience at the level of the family can serve as a proxy for broader levels of analysis. 

Yarris observed that the process of caregiving for their grandchildren gave these women the ability to build resilience and cope. She witnessed how the women found affirmation in their importance as the ones raising the next generation. Their steadfastness serves as a counterpoint to the precarity of their own children’s lives, often working in domestic service or as laborers. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have immigrated since 2020, largely due to an authoritarian regime and economic crisis. 

“Forced migration causes pain and hardship and people cope with it,” Yarris said. “They are resilient. They find ways to create meaning, to carry on and endure, even in prolonged periods of hardship and uncertainty.” 

Victimhood Versus Agency 

Human agency versus victimhood is an important theme in Yarris’s research. In a 2022 paper, she wrote about the experience of attending a public hearing about family separation and deportation as an ethnographer in early 2019. In a chapter published in the book  Migration and Health: Challenging the Borders of Belonging, Care, and Policy, Yarris wrote about how social protections and political rights for migrants are “rendered by states along lines of suffering, with greater hardships made the arbiter for rights.” 

Essentially, Yarris has observed, it’s by being a victim of circumstance that migrants are deemed deserving of protection. And yet, it’s well documented in psychology research that a sense of agency over one’s life is a critical part of mental health. 

She’s quick to point out that even in the midst of struggle and uncertainty, people find ways to advocate for themselves and others. During the 2019 hearing, Yarris observed how speakers, some of whom were migrants themselves brought to the US as children, gave testimony that suggested a reframing from victim of circumstance to being “authorized on the basis of lived experience,” she said. “These people demonstrated that they are members of communities who demand their right to political belonging.” 

Health and Well-being  

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yarris took a leave of absence from the UO to serve on the Lane County Public Health, Latinx Advisory Team and the Community Partnerships Program. It had quickly become apparent that the Latinx community in Oregon was on the whole encountering greater hardships during the pandemic school shutdowns and workplace closures than members of other ethnic groups. Yarris developed a survey of Spanish-speaking community members to inform health outreach strategies. 

“We added a question to the survey about mental health because we heard repeatedly about mental and social health signals,” she said. “The negative effects of social isolation were huge, especially for familial communities that are less individualistic by nature. We heard of missed quinceañeras, missed baptisms (or bautismos), and so on.” Furthermore, for undocumented community members ineligible to receive unemployment insurance, connecting them to local and state-level resources, such as food assistance and the Oregon Worker Relief Fund became a vital part of public health outreach. 

The survey ultimately enabled Yarris to feed information back to the Lane County Health Department to improve outreach to Latinx communities. 

States of Welcome 

Yarris’s current efforts have placed her constant contact with immigrant communities the county. The book she is writing is tentatively titled “State of Welcome: Contested Histories of Sanctuary” examining “sanctuary” states like Oregon. She is actively working with community organizations to help families plan and prepare for the disruptions that may come if a family member or friend is deported.  

In 1987, Oregon became the first state to pass a law prohibiting the use of state or local resources or law enforcement personnel to assist in federal immigration enforcement actions. The law survived an attempted repeal in 2018, with 67% of Oregonians voting against Measure 105, which would have repealed the 1987 law. In 2021, Oregon passed the Sanctuary Promise Act, including greater mechanisms for transparency and accountability into state law. 

“There are wide impacts not just on nuclear family but on communities when someone is deported,” she said. “There is both an economic and social impact. These people are parents. They serve on the PTA. Their kids are on soccer teams. The deliberate inducement of fear can rob people of feeling like they have agency. Mental health is going to be a huge part of this.” 

The threat of deportation will also affect health equity because people may not seek needed medical care (preventative or emergency). Oregon’s Medicaid program, for example, makes services like WIC and breastfeeding consultations available regardless of citizenship status.  

Yarris said she’s concerned that people will stop using services they are lawfully entitled to. “Will someone seek treatment when the use of public services could make them visible? Are parents not going to take their kids to Head Start? Then those kids miss out on learning and are shut in at home.” 

These questions have no easy answers. Yet again, Yarris sees evidence of what she has observed before: That people are resilient. 

“These communities aren’t going to go anywhere,” Yarris said. “People will find ways to stay knitted together even if families look different. Raising kids and supporting child wellbeing brings communities together.”  

— By Kelley Christensen, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation