"Es Muy Tranquilo Aquí": Perceptions of Safety and Calm among Binationally Mobile Mexican Immigrants in a Rural Border Community
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Department of Health Promotion Sciences, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of ArizonaArizona Prevention Research Center, Department of Health Promotion Sciences, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, University of Arizona
Issue Date
2022Keywords
binationalcommunity perceptions
external referents
Mexican immigrants
safety
U.S.-Mexico borderlands
violence
well-being
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Crocker, R. M., Duenas, K., Vázquez, L., Ingram, M., Cordova-Marks, F. M., Torres, E., & Carvajal, S. (2022). “Es Muy Tranquilo Aquí”: Perceptions of Safety and Calm among Binationally Mobile Mexican Immigrants in a Rural Border Community. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(14).Rights
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Perceptions of community can play an important role in determining health and well-being. We know little, however, about residents' perceptions of community safety in the Southwestern borderlands, an area frequently portrayed as plagued by disorder. The qualitative aim of this community-based participatory research study was to explore the perceptions of Mexican-origin border residents about their communities in southern Yuma County, Arizona. Our team of University of Arizona researchers and staff from Campesinos Sin Fronteras, a grassroots farmworker support agency in Yuma County, Arizona, developed a bilingual interview guide and recruited participants through radio adds, flyers, and cold calls among existing agency clientele. Thirty individual interviews with participants of Mexican origin who live in and/or work in rural Yuma County were conducted remotely in 2021. Participants overwhelmingly perceived their communities as both calm and safe. While some participants mentioned safety concerns, the vast majority described high levels of personal security and credited both neighbors and police for ensuring local safety. These perceptions were stated in direct contrast to those across the border, where participants had positive familial and cultural ties but negative perceptions regarding widespread violence. In conclusion, we argue that to understand environmental factors affecting health and well-being in Mexican immigrant populations, it is critical to examine the role of binational external referents that color community perceptions.Note
Open access journalISSN
1660-4601PubMed ID
35886251Version
Final published versionScopus Count
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as Copyright © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).