Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Immigration laws and policies have important implications for the health of immigrants and their US-born co-ethnics by shaping the material and psychosocial conditions that impact health. A wide body of research explores how various immigration policies effect material resources such as access to health insurance, employment, and housing. Less studied, however, is the question of how these policies and the messages they send regarding the place and role of immigrants in US society may influence health.

The purpose if this study is to collect and analyze Twitter data after the passage of anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant laws and policies and unpack the ways in which these policy shifts shape the lives of immigrants and their communities through the material and psychosocial. Twitter is a novel and emerging data source that may provide researchers the opportunity to gain an unfiltered snapshot of the lives and worldview of individuals whose voices are often missing from more traditional research.

Further, this work contributes to a growing body of research which theorizes how racialized ideologies and structural stigma shape population health, particularly for Latinos.

Funding Source: Marshall Weinberg Research Fellowship