More than 4 million unauthorized parents of legal status children currently reside in the United States (Capps, Fix, & Zong, 2016). Developmental scientists and intervention researchers hoping to work with these mixed-status families face a myriad of challenges, largely generated from the population's policy-driven social exclusion. Despite the challenges, there is a moral imperative to work with and support parents and children currently living in mixed-status households. This chapter applies a social justice perspective, largely stemming from Prilleltensky's critical community psychological framework, to improve the relevance and usefulness of research on mixed-status families (Prilleltensky & Nelson, 1997). We discuss the utility of this social justice perspective in theory building, study design and implementation, and dissemination of findings regarding mixed-status families, with exemplars from recent research.
Keywords: Immigration; Intervention; Policy; Social justice; Unauthorized.
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