Farmwork and family: How mixed-status families influence the mental health of foreign born farmworkers

Immigrant agricultural workers, especially unauthorized workers, face a range of severe stressors, including isolation, chronic job insecurity, and marginalization, leading to higher rates of mental health issues compared to native-born populations. This paper investigates mental health outcomes, focusing on symptoms of depression among agricultural workers within the US agricultural sector, specifically among unauthorized immigrant working parents living in mixed-status families (households in which there is a discrepancy in immigration status, often with parents lacking authorization and children having citizenship by birth). Using data from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), which includes the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), we explore how the presence of US-born children influences parental mental health. Findings reveal that unauthorized parents in mixed-status families report significantly lower depressive symptoms than their nonmixed-status counterparts, suggesting that citizen children may act as protective factors. This difference was further stratified along particular domains within the CES-D scale. However, these children may also introduce new stressors, such as heightened fears of family separation. The study underscores the importance of nuanced investigations into how family dynamics intersect with immigration status to shape mental health outcomes. These findings highlight the need for further investigation of the mental health of workers in this vital economic sector, especially in light of the changing demographics of agricultural work since the last large mental health survey of agricultural workers in 2010.