Session: The Venezuelan Diaspora: Understanding Migration Stressors and Mental Health Dynamics in the US and Colombia (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Since 2015, nearly eight million Venezuelans--more than a quarter of the nation's population--have emigrated from what was, until recently, the most prosperous country in Latin America. Many have relocated to the United States (US), but most have settled elsewhere in South America, with neighboring Colombia receiving the highest number of migrants (more than 3 million).

Despite the magnitude of the "Venezuelan diaspora," research on this growing population remains limited. The papers in this symposium provide a rich portrait of how migration-related stressors manifest in the lives of Venezuelan crisis migrants in the US and Colombia. Paper One uses qualitative methods to explore the experiences of Venezuelan parents and children before migration. Paper Two investigates hunger and government repression before migration and their link to posttraumatic stress symptoms through a descriptive approach. Paper Three examines how pre-migration trauma and online xenophobia affect migrant youth's depressive symptoms through interaction effects. Finally, using a machine learning approach, Paper Four delves into the intricate relationship between post-migration stressors and mental health.

Drawing from a qualitative approach, Paper One provides new insight into the pre-migration experiences of Venezuelan parents and their adolescent children in Colombia. Study findings highlight the contrasting experiences of the crisis as experienced by parents and their children--with the parents describing severe hardship and many adolescents noting how their parents went to great lengths to shield them from the harsh realities of the crisis. Findings also point to a phased approach in which parents migrated first to establish stability and reunited with their children after acquiring employment, housing, and basic economic stability.

Papers Two and Three draw from survey data to document how key migration-related stressors impact mental health. Paper Two indicates that pre-migration hunger was much more widespread among Venezuelans who relocated to nearby Colombia (often traveling by foot) than among those who have settled in the US (often traveling via airplane), although rates of pre-migration hunger have increased substantially among US Venezuelans in recent years as greater numbers have entered the US via the southern border. Paper Three shows that pre-migration crisis exposure and post-migration experiences of online xenophobia interact vis-a-vis depressive symptomatology, with xenophobia exposure most closely related to depression among Venezuelans who reported relatively low levels of pre-migration crisis exposure.

Finally, Paper Four uses a cutting-edge quantitative approach showing that an array of post-migration experiences--such as negative context of reception and pressure to acculturate--emerged as the top predictors of major depressive episodes. Although pre-migration factors such as unmet needs or perceived lack of safety and Venezuela are related to mental health, they were found to be less important predictors in the random forest machine learning method.

In all, this symposium aims to provide fresh insight into the experiences of Venezuelan crisis migrants to inform the efforts of those working to meet the psychosocial needs of this large and rapidly expanding population. We also discuss the degree to which findings related to Venezuelans are generalizable to other crisis migrant populations from Latin America.