Structural Threats to Resilience: How Immigration Context Influences Intimate Partner Violence Recovery Among Latina Survivors

Background/Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) has detrimental consequences for Latina women in the U.S., including adverse health and economic outcomes. Despite these consequences, many Latina survivors demonstrate resilience over time. Research has identified factors facilitating recovery across multiple ecological levels, including individual coping strategies, interpersonal support, and community resources. However, immigration enforcement in the United States has intensified in recent years, producing widespread fear, restricted mobility, and reduced access to services across immigrant communities. Yet limited research has examined how this sociopolitical climate specifically influences IPV recovery processes. To examine this gap, this study aimed to answer: (1) How do Latina IPV survivors describe healing and recovery as they navigate a hostile sociopolitical immigration climate? and (2) How does this climate shape access to and use of resilience portfolio strengths?

Methods: This study is part of a larger longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) examining healing among IPV survivors, focusing on the Latina subsample (n=7), ranging in age from 27 to 55; six were foreign-born. Eligibility required that participants had experienced IPV from a former partner, were no longer in an abusive relationship, and demonstrated indicators of recovery. Semi-structured interviews were conducted across two time points spaced three to five months apart between February and December 2025, with two participants completing a third interview. Data were first analyzed following IPA guidelines, through which the immigration enforcement climate emerged as a salient theme. A template analysis was then conducted, reanalyzing the data using the Resilience Portfolio Model (RPM) domains (regulatory, interpersonal, meaning-making, and environmental factors) as the organizing template. Data were independently coded by two team members with consensus meetings.

Results: Participants described the immigration enforcement climate as a pervasive presence constraining resilience resources across all four RPM domains. Themes included (a) environmental constraints, (b) interpersonal disruptions, (c) regulatory demands, and (d) meaning-making threats. Participants reported restricted movement in community spaces, disrupted healthcare access, and limited employment mobility. Movement restrictions limited participants’ engagement with community networks and volunteer activities central to recovery. Participants distinguished between feeling emotionally supported and feeling structurally safe. Participants described disrupted sleep, heightened vigilance, and the compounding of immigration-related fear with existing recovery demands, though some redirected faith practices and day-to-day coping strategies. The threat of deportation destabilized future-oriented recovery narratives and disrupted participants’ sense of purpose. For some participants, access to legal protections provided a degree of stability, while U.S. citizenship fundamentally shaped how the immigration climate was experienced.

Conclusions/Implications: Findings extend the RPM by demonstrating that immigration enforcement restricted participants’ ability to use the resources that had supported their recovery, functioning both as a contextual stressor and as a structural modifier of resilience resources. These results suggest IPV service providers must attend to immigration-related threats as integral to survivors’ recovery. Future research should examine these dynamics across diverse immigrant communities and identify strategies addressing structural barriers to resilience.