Abstract
Background
There is evidence to suggest that undocumented, unaccompanied migrant youths confront emotional and physical hardships while working in the U.S. agriculture industry. However, little is known about the type of support available to these youths that could protect them from negative developmental outcomes.
Objective
This qualitative research was designed to explore Guatemalan migrant youths’ available support types, expectations of coming to the U.S. for work, and the life lessons learned from being undocumented, unaccompanied minors in the agriculture industry.
Methods
A total of 10 unaccompanied Guatemalan youths (age range 15–17 years, Mage = 16.4 years; 100% male; 100% undocumented) participated in individual semi-structured audio-voice-recorded interviews in the Southeast. Interview responses were transcribed, coded, and analyzed.
Results
Thematic analysis yielded three primary interconnected themes: (1) “Coping and managing sadness by reaching out to others,” (2) “I have a dream but then, reality hits,” and (3) “Life lessons for future migrants.”
Conclusion
Findings suggest that despite their vulnerable social position, Guatemalan migrant youth in U.S. agriculture displayed an optimistic attitude, exercised persistence, and developed resourcefulness. Besides these competencies, youth possessed social networks with left-behind families, developed and leveraged new social ties to “manage sadness,” and built a tight-knit community away from their countries of origin.
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Data Availability (Data Transparency)
All authors are responsible for data transparency.
Code Availability
Code available upon request.
Notes
The Trump administration (January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021) completed 472 executive actions affecting U.S. immigration policy. Some of the most salient anti-immigrant policies and laws included the following measures. First, in 2017, an executive order granted priority for arrest of every unauthorized immigrant in the U.S. (Bolter et al., 2022) and 32% people arrested had never been convicted of a crime (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, [ICE], 2020). Second, travel bans denied entry to nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days (Boghani, 2019). Third, the restriction of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border as well as limitations on who qualifies for asylum in the U.S. (Boghani, 2019). Fourth, unaccompanied children were to be accepted into the U.S. if they were not coming from Canada and Mexico and to be released to a parent or guardian in the U.S. However, during the Trump administration, there were several efforts in place to ensure that fewer unaccompanied children could be released (Bolter et al., 2022). Some of those efforts included adding more steps to the adjudication process to examine whether the youth no longer met the legal definition of an unaccompanied child, placing unaccompanied youth in detention facilities, and asking for more information from potential sponsors for unaccompanied children, thus preventing undocumented individuals to from gaining custody of the youth. (Bolter et al., 2022). Fifth, zero tolerance leading to family separation. Specifically, if parents and their children crossed to the U.S. illegally, then the parent(s) experienced prosecution and the child would be taken away from the parents and put in the care of DHHS. This measure was seen by many as a strategy to discourage families from crossing to the U.S. (Boghani, 2019). Sixth, the ending of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of individuals from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan. Particularly, citizens of Somalia, Syria, Yemen and South Sudan could not safely return to their countries of origin due to natural disasters, conflict, or other unique circumstances (Boghani, 2019). Lastly, U.S. Public Charge-Rule gave the government discretion to deny admission and green cards to any individual who is likely to become a public charge (Batalova et al., 2019), thus low-income immigrants, children, older adults, and migrants from Mexico and Central America could be considered inadmissible by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department (Bolter et al., 2022).
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the Latino migrant farmworker youth who participated in the qualitative component of the research.
Funding
This research was supported by the Kappa Omicron Nu National Honor Society for the Human Sciences (KON) Initiatives Grant; Florida State University – College of Human Sciences’ Dissertation Research Grant; and Mr. Mark Ottman’s Endowment Fund awarded to Fiorella L. Carlos Chavez.
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The first author contributed to the conceptualization, funding acquisition, data collection, larger project administration, preliminary analysis of the data, supervision of in-depth data analysis, visualization of data results, writing of the initial draft, and the final review and editing of the final manuscript version. The second author contributed to the in-depth data analysis using NVivo software and to the presentation of the results, visualization of data results and translations as well as the critical review, commentary, and revision of the initial and final manuscript draft. The third author contributed to the paper conceptualization, especially the guiding theoretical framework, critical review, commentary, and revision of the initial and final manuscript draft. The fourth author contributed to the writing of the policy recommendations section as well as the critical review, commentary, and revision of the final manuscript draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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All procedures performed in the present study were approved by the Institutional Review Board at Florida State University (approval no. HSC#: 2018.23301) and were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Moreover, all data analysis, manuscript preparation and write up took place at Arizona State University, with IRB approval number: STUDY00014632.
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Participant assent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Carlos Chavez, F.L., Bariani, A., Carlo, G. et al. Lessons from the Field: Seeking Support and Sharing Wisdom Among Unaccompanied Guatemalan Migrant Youths in U.S. Agriculture. Child Youth Care Forum (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-024-09802-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-024-09802-y