Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The dramatic rise of anti-immigrant state laws coupled with the increased enforcement of federal immigration laws has produced a hostile environment that scholars have termed “Hispanophobia.” Anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments permeate through social, temporal, and spatial spheres of life in the United States granting no reprieve to immigrants or Latinos. A possible mechanism for mediating the effects of sociopolitical marginalization is circular migration that would allow immigrants to leave the hostile environment of their host countries for a temporary period. But is this temporary respite from Hispanophobia enough to counter negative health outcomes? This paper aims at investigating this possible relationship by utilizing data from the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico (N=1493). Ordered logistic regressions are used to estimate the relationship between circular migration and self-rated physical and mental health. The study finds that those who engaged in circular migration had decreased probabilities of reporting excellent physical or mental health. These results and discussion are especially timely for policymakers, practitioners, and the Latino community more broadly as issues of immigration policy and immigrant rights grow in saliency due to the election cycle.