Rethinking border violence: A socio‐structural analysis of Latinx immigrants' perceptions of and strategies for safety, security, and well‐being

Abstract

Expanding understandings of immigration as a determinant of health, this paper examines how border violence operates as an enduring socio‐structural regime, shaping Latinx immigrants' experiences of safety, (in)security, and well‐being in the U.S. Drawing on 30 semi‐structured interviews conducted as part of a larger community‐based participatory research project, we trace how participants interpret violence and insecurity across pre‐migration, migration and post‐migration contexts and multiple levels (individual, community and structural). Rather than conceptualizing borders as static lines or migration as a singular event, we conceptualize border violence as a transnational and temporal regime that governs mobility, produces precarity, and structures everyday life long after settlement. Participants' narratives reveal how: (1) structural exclusion and economic insecurity shape perceptions of risk and vulnerability across space and time, (2) how neighborhood‐level precarity, securitization, surveillance, and constrained mobility undermine stability and well‐being, and (3) how safety is negotiated through relational, symbolic, and material strategies within immigrant communities. By centering migrant' lived interpretations of safety and (in)security, this study advances a socio‐structural framework that moves beyond individual or behavioral models of immigrant well‐being and highlights border violence as a multiscalar condition that permeates immigrants' lives and shapes their everyday survival.