COVID-19 and decreased asylum access: mother work, precarity and preocupación among Central American asylum-seekers in Los Angeles

Abstract

In 2020, the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the U.S. government’s increased legal restrictions on asylum-seekers acted together to increase social, economic and legal precarity in the lives of Central American asylum-seeking mothers in Los Angeles. In this context, these asylum-seeking mothers discussed their intersectional precarities through the idiom of distress “preocupación”, which signalled the concerns, worries, and fears they had in relation to the daily mother work of raising their children. Using ethnographic data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, I examine how the intersectional precarities Central American asylum-seeking mothers faced necessitated protecting their children from their own preocupación. Through this, I argue that by using the analytic of preocupación it is possible to see exactly how racial and legal barriers to care increase precarity in the lives of asylum-seeking mothers in the U.S., and the detrimental impact that intersectional precarities have on asylum-seekers’ mother work today.