Latin American Studies Association 2025 Congress
Poner el cuerpo en Latinx América
This iteration of the LASA Congress sets out to put the body on the line. To place the body center-stage in order to reveal its weight, relevance, and meaning. To recover its memory and materiality in our debates and agendas; to explore its dimensions at once individual and communal, biological and digital, contingent and situated. Because awakening our skin, opening our eyes and ears, setting our tongues in motion means reading ourselves, understanding ourselves as other(s), and rejecting the petrification of a single way of feeling and thinking.
Emotional Journeys: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Youth Migration Narratives
Denis Rey, Steven Mayers, Jonathan Freedman
Sunday May 25, 2025, 3:30 PM, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, 4th Floor, Pacific B
The question that our research aims to address is: How are youth migrants from Central America emotionally affected by their journey through Mexico and into the United States? Much has been written about the psychological and emotional impact of poverty, trauma, and violence on youth migrants, but very little is known about how the journey has directly affected these youth by analyzing the words they use to describe their experiences. With this research, we have a unique opportunity to research this question using interviews of close to two dozen youth migrants in differing stages of their journey. Our research employs Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to determine positive and negative emotion, sadness, anxiety, and ideations of death in the voices of youth migrants from Central America’s Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras) who have travelled through Mexico in hopes of reaching and crossing the southern US border. These migrants describe the pull or push factors that motivated their decisions to migrate, the dangerous journey across Mexico, and their experience crossing the border and interacting with Border Patrol officials. Our research allows us to isolate each of these factors to determine their effects on these individuals. We expect to find that the journey across Mexico significantly affects the psychological and emotional well-being of these individuals. The research will shed light on what may be the more traumatizing aspects of the journey as well as who may be more susceptible to the greatest harm and benefit from mental health services.
Solito2Solidarity 