Yarris, Kristin
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Item Open Access Interview Success! CSW Workshop Provides Invaluable Advice for Graduate Students on the Job Market(UCLA, 2010-11-01) Park, Rebekah; Yarris, KristinThis article presents an overview of a workshop held by UCLA's Center for the Study of Women to assist graduate students in their job search. It gives a short review, lists some of the best tips, and provides some opinions of the attendees.Item Open Access Casi Como Madres: Examining the Role of Grandmothers in Global Care Chains(UCLA, 2011-03-01) Yarris, KristinIn this article, Yarris provides a necessarily brief overview of grandmother’s experiences of “mothering again” for another generation of (grand)children in Nicaraguan families of migrant mothers. Despite the fact that grandmothers assume caregiving for children over often prolonged periods of mothers’ absence (the mean duration of migration for families in my study was 2.5 years, with a range of 6 months to 12 years), grandmothers’ roles as surrogate mothers are tenuous and precarious. In what follows, Yarris illustrates this point using the example of Aurora, a grandmother who cared for two granddaughters “como si fueran su madre” (as if I were their mother) after their mother migrated to Spain.Item Open Access Description and Pilot Evaluation of a Dreamer Ally Training for Higher Education Staff and Faculty(2021-09-01) McWhirter, Ellen Hawley; Yarris, Kristin; Rojas-Araúz, Bryan OvidioWe describe a Dreamer Ally training provided to staff and faculty on a university campus and present results of a pilot evaluation of this training. The Dreamer Ally training was designed to (a) increase university faculty and staff awareness, understanding, and self-efficacy for working with Dreamer students and (b) stimulate action to make the campus more responsive to the challenges and contributions of Dreamer students. For the purpose of this study we define Dreamer students as inclusive of undocumented students, students with the temporary protection of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), students who qualify for the state’s tuition equity program, and students from mixed legal status families. Study goals were to describe the training, gather pilot data on participant learning goals, post-training satisfaction and self-efficacy for supporting Dreamer students, and generate participant feedback about utility of training components and their plans for subsequent action. Participants completed questionnaires before and after the training. Responses to open-ended questions indicated that most participants attended in order to learn how to better support Dreamer students. Paired samples (pre and post) t-tests indicated significantly higher self-efficacy for supporting Dreamer students at posttest. Participant satisfaction with the training was high and found the information session content and working through different Dreamer student scenarios most useful. Action plans included changing program or unit websites to be more inclusive of Dreamers. Limitations include the absence of a control group. Findings can inform institutional efforts to raise faculty and staff awareness of and responsiveness to the challenges facing Dreamer students.Item Open Access Immigrant Communities and the Public Charge Rule(American Anthropological Society, 2018-10-29) Duncan, Whitney; Horton, Sarah; Yarris, KristinItem Open Access Item Open Access Gender, inequality and Depo-Provera: Constraints on reproductive choice in Nicaragua(Taylor and Francis, 2016-04-13) Yarris, Kristin; Dent, Nicolette JeannetteThis article examines the sociocultural determinants of Nicaraguan women’s use of Depo-Provera as a means of contraception. The prevalence of Depo-Provera in Nicaragua is high and increasing compared to other Central American countries. Drawing on data from structured interviews with 87 women and from focus groups with 32 women, we show how women’s preference for Depo is shaped by both gendered inequalities and socioeconomic constraints. We employ basic statistical tests to analyse correlations between women’s marital status and socioeconomic status (SES) with contraceptive use. Our statistical findings show significant associations between use of Depo and both marital status and SES, such that women who are married or in conjugal unions and women with lower SES are more likely to use Depo. To help explain women’s use of Depo-Provera in Nicaragua, we situate our findings within the context of gender, culture, and power, reviewing the contested history of Depo-Provera in the developing world and dynamics of gender inequality, which constrain women’s contraceptive choices. We conclude with suggestions for reproductive health programming in Nicaragua and beyond, arguing that gender equity and addressing socioeconomic barriers to family planning remain priorities for the achievement of global reproductive health.Item Open Access Crisis and Caregiving(Cambridge, 2019) Yarris, KristinGenerations can also be considered in relation to social regeneration, revealing how childbearing and childrearing organize family relations of care and membership in and across generations (child/parent/grandparent) within networks of extended kin (see Jennifer Cole and Deborah Durham, Generations and Globalization: Youth, Age, and Family in the New World Economy, Indiana University Press, 2007). [...]my intergenerational analysis of transnational family life reveals migration's impacts on families in the present, as relations of care are reconfigured across generational lines, from migrant mother to grandmother caregiver, and as family members' responses to migration are infused with memories and meanings from the migratory experiences of past generations. (While Norman and other Nicaraguans are technically eligible to apply for asylum status on the grounds of political persecution, the cost of legal resources for the process make it outside the reach of the majority of migrants from the neighboring country.) In a recent conversation via WhatsApp, I asked Norman about his experience in Costa Rica. All names of research participants herein are changed to protect individuals' anonymity Kristin Elizabeth Yarris is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at the University of Oregon, where she also Co-Directs the Center for Global Health and serves on the Dreamers Working Group.Item Open Access COVID and Coraje: Negotiating Latinx Immigrant Experiences of the Pandemic(American Anthropological Association, 2021-01-01) Duncan, Whitney; Horton, Sarah; Yarris, KristinIn this paper, we compare observations from engaged ethnography and participant observation with Latinx immigrants in Colorado and Oregon during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, we focus on lived experiences of structural vulnerability, as well as the ways in which COVID-related disparities have become internalized as stigma and have amplified immigrants’ experiences of stress, anxiety, and “aislamiento,” or isolation. Indeed, Latinx immigrants in the US—especially those without legal status and those in mixed-status families—face a range of exclusions, discourses of blame and (un)deservingness, and forms of precarity that have contributed to disproportionate risk, suffering, and fear as the pandemic has unfolded. At the same time, by laying bare blatant injustices and racist exclusions, the pandemic has prompted some Latinx immigrants in our research and advocacy sites to enact new forms of resistance and contestation. We detail the range of ways which, in efforts to stay healthy and to challenge discriminatory portrayals of themselves as either disease carriers unlikely to heed public health warnings or as “public charges,” they insist upon their own rights, worth, belonging, and dignity. Finally, we conclude by discussing some of the ways in which these two U.S. states—and the health and social service organizations working with Latinx communities within them—have attempted to address coronavirus disparities among Latinx communities, showing how particular approaches can assuage short-term suffering and improve access to healthcare and other social supports, while others may create a new set of barriers to access for already marginalized communitiesItem Open Access Protecting Undocumented Students Post-Election(American Anthropological Association, 2016-12-07) Yarris, Kristin; Heidbrink, Lauren; Duncan, Whitney L.Item Open Access Welcoming Acts Temporality and Aff ect among Volunteer Humanitarians in the UK and USA(Berghahn Journals, 2022) Humphris, Rachel; Yarris, KristinThis article compares local volunteer mobilizations offering welcome to forced migrants in the USA (Oregon) and UK (Yorkshire). We contribute to literature on volunteer-based humanitarianism by attending to the importance of affect and temporality in the politics of welcoming acts, presenting the notion of “affective arcs.” While extant literature argues that volunteers become increasingly contestational, we identify a countertendency as volunteers move from outrage toward pragmatism. Through long-term ethnographic engagement, we argue that affective arcs reveal a particular understanding of “the political” and an underlying belief in a fair nation state that has not reckoned with colonial legacies in migration governance. By carefully tracing affective arcs of volunteer humanitarian acts, this article offers original insights into the constrained political possibilities of these local forms of welcome.