Sarah Bruhn

Examines how immigration policy seeps into the lives of immigrant parents, shaping their decisions and strategies at home and in their communities. Offers suggestions for improving immigrant parents’ lives and opportunities, with an emphasis on undocumented parents.

Examines how Covid-19 school closures impacted Latina immigrant mothers as they suddenly confronted job loss, illness, and increased familial responsibilities. Shows how Latina immigrant women renegotiated relationships to schooling, becoming teachers overnight in an unfamiliar system, and shifted educational aspirations for their children as they managed increased stress and conflict.

Argues that spaces of belonging, where connection and recognition are readily available, are essential to immigrant youths’ experiences of migration. Describes how these spaces of belonging are created, demonstrating how place shapes opportunities for inclusion for immigrant young people.

Examines how Latina immigrant mothers negotiate their identities as mothers and immigrants within the competing contexts of a gentrifying sanctuary city and an anti-immigrant federal environment.

Documents how transnational caregiving for immigrant women encompasses a set of complex gendered roles as mothers and daughters across national borders. Shows how despite the labor this emotional and economic work entails, immigrant mothers value their carework, which ultimately becomes a means for them to exert agency in the face of anti-immigrant policies.