Interpretative Theory of Hardship, Resilience, and Resistance in Chicago's Little Village Community

The leading framework for understanding Mexican immigrant health has focused on individual-level adaptation to stressful immigration experiences. Issues of race and power have received much less attention. I adopted a critical race theory lens through which to interrogate the relationship between culture, community context, and health in a Mexican immigrant neighborhood. To do so, I interpreted a collection of stories from Chicago’ Little Village neighborhood. These stories were recorded as part of a collaborative, participatory community health assessment. I used constructivist grounded theory as a methodology to examine these archival records. In this study, I present examples of inequities and narratives that jeopardize transformative efforts at the community level. Additionally, I frame resilience not only as adaptation, but also as resistance. My interpretative analyses show how the Little Village community acts as a space of survival and resistance for generations of Mexican immigrants. The neighborhood has a symbolic significance for the plight of Mexicans in segregated Chicago. Leaders and activists from the community described a transformative vision for inter-generational change and collective impact. Immigrant mothers play a particularly important role in carrying out this vision in day-to-day life. Gentrification and lack of resources continuously threaten to disrupt collective power in the community. The theoretical depth of this study complicates ahistorical models of resilience and imply the need for a decolonial lens in conceptualizing community health and wellbeing.