This feature is part of an ongoing RSF blog series, Work in Progress, which highlights some of the research of our current class of Visiting Scholars.

At RSF, Visiting Scholar Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) is examining how immigration status and migration history affect the experiences of low-income Latino parents who are facing allegations of child abuse or neglect in the Bronx Family Court. Using data from a 26-month ethnographic study, she is exploring how immigrant families make sense of their court involvement, how they navigate and understand court mandates, and the extent to which courts have managed to address the needs of a diverse Latino population.

In an interview with the foundation, Katz discussed some of her ongoing research in the Bronx, including how demographic changes in New York City have created new challenges for the court system, and how one family has attempted to navigate the system.

Q. Your current research examines low-income Latino immigrant families’ experiences with the family court system in the Bronx. How have demographic changes in the Bronx over the last few decades affected the way families there come into contact with family court? How does immigration status influence parents’ interactions with the court system?

Katz: The Bronx is the only Hispanic-majority borough in New York City, and it’s also the county in New York State with the highest number of family court cases filed annually that involve child neglect or abuse. The two groups that have historically made up the majority of Hispanic residents there are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans; in the last couple of decades, they have increasingly been joined by immigrants from Mexico and other parts of Central America. But since public agencies in NYC do not collect data on country of origin or residency status, the Bronx Family Court has been slow to recognize demographic shifts among families that they serve. 

Not collecting immigration-related data is not an oversight by NYC; it’s one element in a set of protections for undocumented New Yorkers to enable them to engage with services they qualify for and to seek assistance if they become victims of crime and abuse. But at the same time, not tracking those data can make it harder for social institutions, like family courts, to recognize when demographic changes are occurring and to respond to the changing needs within populations that they serve. In my forthcoming book, I detail how and why newcomers to the Bronx from Mexico and other parts of Central America do are not recognized as having different needs from other Hispanic residents (due to their residency status, migration experiences, language dialect issues, and so forth) and how that makes the trajectories of their family court cases different from those of their neighbors.

Q. One of the families you interviewed, the “Garzas,” entered the family court system on charges of neglect. What challenges did they face in navigating the system? How did their attempts to comply with court mandates affect their home life and financial wellbeing?

The “Garzas,” a mixed-status family whose case I followed closely for over a year, faced a host of challenges. Their case came to court because they had misunderstood a therapist’s instructions; the parents only spoke Spanish and the therapist only spoke English. As a result, the family missed scheduled appointments, triggering a medical neglect case. The Garza’s language constraints were an issue throughout their case, especially because they were never assigned a Spanish-speaking case worker—their older daughter had to broker between the case workers and her parents, raising anxiety levels for all concerned and increasing the chances of misunderstandings between the parties.

These parents are also undocumented, which makes them ineligible for most of the poverty alleviation programs that other families could turn to to help maintain family stability during their court cases. The Garzas earned their living as street vendors, so every time they had a court date, the family had no income that day. And the differences between the resources their U.S.-born daughter (who was at the center of the case) could access, and those her parents could not, exacerbated the ways that the Garzas’ authority was reduced in their household by being in family court, ultimately making it even harder for them to regain control of a wayward daughter.

Q. How can greater understanding of hyperdiversity help family courts better address the needs of immigrant families? What kinds of policies could family courts in cities with large immigrant populations adopt in order to better serve their communities?

In Shattering Culture (published by the Russell Sage Foundation), Seth Hannah introduces the concept of “hyperdiversity” to emphasize that service provider-recipient relationships don’t only involve negotiations of “culture,” but also of nationality, mother tongue or dialect, and so forth. While efforts toward cultural competence have and are gaining ground in family courts nationwide, it’s the importance of hyperdiversity in family court that I want to highlight, and that is largely going unrecognized. To understand what ails a family in crisis, judges, case workers, and attorneys endeavor to uncover the root causes for symptoms that family members are expressing that may put children at risk for maltreatment. If courts do not recognize differences among “Hispanic,” or even among “Spanish-speaking Hispanic” families, they risk misdiagnosis in a number of ways that can leave families worse off rather than better. I’m still working through my analyses, so not quite ready to provide policy recommendations—but stay tuned for the final chapter of the book!