From fall 2024 - to summer 2025, Kellogg Doctoral Affiliate Cat Gargano (pychology and peace studies) traveled to Tijuana, México on a Kellogg Institute Graduate Research Grant to conduct research and in-depth interviewing for her project “Migrants’, Asylum-Seekers’, and Refugees’ Insights: Policies, Observations, Strengths, and Adaptations (Project MARIPOSA).”
Research Purpose and Goals
From Fall 2024 to Summer 2025, I lived and conducted research in Tijuana, México, a large city at the U.S.-Mexico border. I had previously worked with community members and organizations in Tijuana to co-create an app, Umed.me Migration, and this project (Proyecto MARIPOSA) similarly focused on migrants’ mental health during transit. Transit can be thought of as the entire time between when a person leaves their home and when they are fully settled with legal status in what they consider to be their final location. In psychology, most research with migrant communities has taken place after people arrive in their final destination; however I have seen first hand how challenging it can be to apply learnings and interventions from post-migration contexts to the realities of transit. The main goal of Proyecto MARIPOSA was to learn from migrants who are experts in their own lived experiences of migration and mental health. In particular, I was interested in (1) understanding how policy-related factors such as pervasive uncertainty, longer duration of time in transit, and exposure to dangers along the route and in Tijuana impacted wellbeing, (2) identifying which strategies people were already using to adapt and cope with life in transit, and (3) learning how each person conceptualized their own wellbeing and distress.
Research Activities
During my grant period, I worked with Anel, my research assistant, to conduct 150 in-depth semi-structured interviews in 9 different shelters serving the migrant community in Tijuana. We found ourselves conducting interviews wherever there was private space in the shelters from offices to rooftops to cars to empty daycare rooms and basements. The interviews included questions about each person’s journey and experiences before, during, and after that journey. We also asked people open-ended questions about coping skills and how they identified when they had wellbeing or when they were stressed by asking them to identify what changes they noticed in their thoughts, bodies, behaviors, and emotions at times when they were well or stressed. Finally, the interviews included standardized measures of traumatic experiences, symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, hope, social support, and discrimination. Although we had asked about challenging topics, many people stated at the end of their interview that they enjoyed the space to reflect and thanked us for taking the time to ask them. Over time, people at some of the shelters came to expect us and would refer their friends to participate as well. I felt very honored that they trusted us, welcomed us, and felt comfortable enough to share their experiences with us.
Findings and Next Steps
So far, I have gotten to present preliminary observations from the study in Tlaxcala, México for the Fulbright García-Robles mid-year conference as well as in Colombo, Sri Lanka for Fulbright John Lewis symposium. Right now, we are still wrapping up our final interviews in Tijuana. Next, I will analyze the qualitative data to look for themes related to wellbeing and distress. Then, I will integrate those themes with more quantitative data from symptom measures to find out if and how they are related to mental health outcomes. Once the research is conducted, I plan to present the findings to my colleagues and other stakeholders in Tijuana who are serving the migrant community there with the hope that what we have learned from migrant experts through this study can inform future services and interventions provided.