Context matters: Placing the sociopolitical context into research on enclave-health effects and immigration enforcement

Abstract

County governments across the U.S. adopt varied immigrant-related policies that facilitate or hinder immigrant inclusion. County-level social, economic, and geographic characteristics also differ by location-resulting in diverging immigrant inclusion goals and local contexts that disparately impact the lives and health of immigrants and their families. Although ethnic enclaves-communities where a large share of coethnic and immigrant residents live-are embedded within broader county governments, research on enclave-health effects have seldom considered the sociopolitical contexts, especially the immigration enforcement policies, in the settings where enclaves exist. This paper examines differences in immigration enforcement policies across U.S. counties. Data are from multiple sources, including the 2016-2020 American Community Survey, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. In a stepwise process, we generated nine county types using county-level social, economic, and geography-related characteristics. This resulted in 236 urban and suburban counties where Latino density was above 13.9%. In bivariate analyses comparing county types, we found significant statistical differences in the number of immigration enforcement (p < 0.00) and immigrant inclusion (p < 0.00) policies. There were also statistically significant demographic and diversity differences between county types (p < 0.00). Our results suggest a need to examine the county-level immigration policy context in research on enclave-health effects, as such contexts shape immigrant inclusion, immigrant health, and community wellbeing. Integrating the sociopolitical context may help to clarify points of intervention that county governments and immigrant communities can lead.

Keywords: Counties; Ethnic enclaves; Immigrant health; Immigration; Immigration enforcement; Sociopolitical context.