Science

A reconstruction of Pacific Ocean temperatures 21,000 years ago, based on the chemistry of tiny shells, adds hefty support to projections that climate change will make strong El Niño events far more common, leading to more extreme weather around the world.

“We’re projecting a pretty dramatic change,” says Kaustubh Thirumalai at the University of Arizona.

The irregular cycle between warmer- and cooler-than-average temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean –…

Despite all the hype around quantum computers, they are still far too error-prone to be of real use. But recent experiments show that this may not always be the case, boosting the credibility of claims from companies like Google and IBM that we might get useful quantum computers as soon as 2029. These latest experiments represent key milestones and signal that we are entering a new age, say researchers.

“Suddenly, really useful devices seem tantalisingly close, in a way that they never have done before,” says Jamie…

As we close out September, universities across Canada are well into their new year of learning. An exciting change is underway. An increasing number of First Nations, Inuit and Métis students have enrolled in post-secondary studies.

Many universities are aware of this growing interest in post-secondary studies among Indigenous Peoples and have actively recruited from this rising demographic. In 2021, Statistics Canada reported an increase in First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples acquiring bachelors-level degrees compared to the previous five years. Statistics Canada data also points to a promising increase in employment status for Indigenous graduates.

But the exciting trend is raising questions about what commitments universities have made to the recruitment, retention and support of Indigenous students.

It has been more than 20 years since educators and scholars Verna Kirkness and Ray Barnhardt released their seminal essay calling for universities to ensure programming is respectful, relevant, reciprocal and responsible to Indigenous students and communities.

Today, institutions must ask: How are the cultural backgrounds of Indigenous students appropriately honored and reflected in university programming? How comfortable do Indigenous students feel within these spaces where the reconciliatory journey is a relatively new initiative?

Cultural safety of Indigenous students

The question of cultural safety may be particularly resonant in required core classes of content exploring Indigenous history and culture. Indigenous requirements courses (IRCs) are a relatively new endeavor for universities in Canada. Many universities have introduced IRCs, positing them as an effective response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) Calls to Action.

For example, both the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University have introduced university-wide requirements for all undergraduate students to complete one course that focuses on Indigenous content. Trent University introduced a similar requirement in 2018.

Offering IRCs is a centralized approach. Courses can be selected from a main list drawing from several disciplinary areas.

Yet even before universities introduced IRCs, some specific areas of study such as teacher education have had faculty requirements in which students are mandated to study Indigenous content specific to their field.

Study hearing from Indigenous students

As professors with combined expertise in education, curriculum, teaching and learning, we have been collaborating in a study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council focused around the experiences of Indigenous students enrolled in IRCs for students in education faculties or departments. The research has also included interviews with Indigenous instructors.

Our research team has learned of concerns that these courses may be particularly difficult, stressful and potentially triggering for Indigenous students who may feel scrutinized as their cultural identities are subjects of study.

We heard concerns about ensuring cultural safety—environments where both students and instructors feel respected, safe and free to express their cultural identities without discrimination.

The combination of new required Indigenous content courses, and the increase in Indigenous students enrolled in them raises concerns about how Indigenous students and faculty are being affected by course content, the approaches instructors employ and the responses of non-Indigenous students.

Non-Indigenous students’ unfamiliarity

Because these courses are required, enrolled students usually bring a wide diversity of background and experience. Many, if not most, of the students are non-Indigenous, have little to no background in Indigenous studies and are unfamiliar with Indigenous worldviews, cultures, languages and values.

These concerns are exacerbated when content in these courses reflect difficult and at times traumatic issues like the residential school system and the ongoing travesty of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG). These issues may be abstract to some, but can be very closely connected to Indigenous students’ lived realities.

Cultural safety is also a concern for Indigenous instructors who teach IRCs amid ongoing anti-Indigenous racism and hostilities to decolonization.

As such, universities hold a moral obligation to ensure Indigenous cultural safety and ethical engagements are at the heart of teaching and learning within these courses.

Hopeful progress made

There have been a number of positive initiatives employed by Canadian universities to ensure the cultural safety of Indigenous students is addressed.

For instance, some universities have begun to recruit Indigenous faculty members to instruct such courses. Many have also worked to ensure instructors have appropriate expertise, cultural backgrounds and community experiences to address Indigenous content in effective ways.

Additionally, some universities have made changes to their campuses to make them more culturally relevant for Indigenous students and communities. A relatively recent development in some Canadian universities is the establishment of strategic plans that prioritize indigenization.

Cultural safety: central to reconciliation commitments

When universities declare their commitments to reconciliation, that commitment must accompany changes necessary to ensure Indigenous students are truly welcomed and celebrated on campuses. The issue of cultural safety ought to be central to those commitments.

Canadian universities have a moral obligation to ensure Indigenous cultural safety and ethical engagements are at the heart of teaching and learning within Indigenous requirement courses, and beyond.

With a growing number of Indigenous students attending our universities and enrolled in IRCs, it is paramount to ensure students may learn in an environment in which they are respected, safe and free to express their cultural identities without discrimination.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Since returning to power three years ago, the Taliban have been enforcing oppressive laws that violate people’s freedoms and human rights, especially those of women and girls.

But a newly passed “vice and virtue” law goes further. It is among the most repressive and discriminatory measures ever enacted by the Islamist fundamentalist group.

As a human rights activist from Afghanistan, and as a scholar working on Afghanistan since 2002, we have been documenting the Taliban’s attacks against women for decades.

The new law seeks to completely silence women in public. They are prohibited from speaking, singing or praying aloud. The law also attempts to literally erase them from view, ordering women to cover every part of their body and face in public.

The edict suppresses most of women’s political, civil and human rights guaranteed under international law. And if women resist, it orders the use of violence to repress them.

A return to power

Generations of women who grew up in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and who are now living in Afghanistan and abroad, have responded to the vice and virtue law with disbelief and horror.

After 2001, when the Taliban were removed from power, millions of Afghan women and girls went to school. They became professionals—lawyers, artists, athletes, engineers and human rights leaders. They voted in large numbers and served in all areas of government.

But the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 after waging a violent war against the United States and Afghanistan’s NATO-backed government. And they have aggressively rolled back two decades of advancements in women’s rights.

Since then, the Taliban have issued over 100 decrees and directives that violate women’s and girls’ rights under international law and Afghan national law.

They include more than 20 increasingly restrictive directives. Among other things, they ban women and girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade, denying 1.5 million girls and young women access to education. Afghanistan is now the only country in the world to ban girls from both secondary school and university.

The mandates have also barred women and girls from employment in the United Nations and other nongovernmental organizations. This has made it exceptionally difficult for humanitarian aid agencies to reach Afghan women and children in dire need of assistance, particularly in public health.

The fundamentalist group, additionally, prohibits women and girls from traveling, going to parks or being in public without a male relative accompanying them. And it bars women and girls from gathering to protest this treatment.

Punishments include torture and rape

To enforce these violations, the Taliban dissolved the Ministry of Women’s Affairs just weeks after assuming power and replaced it with the Ministry of Virtue and Vice, whose morality police violently enforce the measures.

Punishments for those who protest the laws include beatings, detention, torture, rape and death. Women protesters have reported being beaten and tortured with electric shocks. The Taliban have reportedly raped girls and women in jail, including filming the gang rape of an Afghan woman activist jailed for protesting.

Women, simultaneously, have no means of seeking justice. The Taliban have abolished the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. The commission investigated and reported about alleged extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, illegal detention and inhuman treatment and violence against women, among other rights violations.

The Taliban, additionally, have eliminated other mechanisms for protecting women, including by shuttering all women’s shelters and domestic violence centers.

‘Duty-bound to hide her voice’

The new vice and virtue law further breaches women’s rights.

Article 13, for example, dictates that if a woman leaves her home, she “is duty-bound to hide her voice, face and body.”

It orders women’s voices to be completely silenced. They are not to speak, sing, laugh, cry, pray or recite the Quran in public. The measure instructs enforcers to prevent “the sound of a woman’s voice or any music emanating from any gathering or from the home.”

The measure also defines the hijab, a head covering worn in public by some Muslim women, in the most restrictive terms possible. No longer just a head covering, the hijab is extended to a full body covering and veiling of the face. Women are also prohibited from making eye contact with men.

This runs against Afghan tradition. Traditional Afghan attire for women is brilliantly colored, elaborately decorated, with long sleeves, full skirts and pants underneath.

Wider restrictions

The vice and virtue measure also takes aim at the general population.

It censors people’s access to media and dictates punishments for broadcasting music, videos, photographs or films of humans or animals. Article 22 forbids Afghan women and men from befriending non-Muslims or assisting them in any way.

The law gives overwhelming power to religious inspectors, called “enforcers.”

Enforcers can act based on observation and hearsay, or the testimony of two people.

And there is a list of punishments that enforcers can apply. They include intimidation, verbal punishment and the confiscation and destruction of property.

Repeated violations by individuals or groups can lead to prosecution before a court. Based on the Taliban’s erroneous interpretation of Sharia criminal law, the vice and virtue law allows for long-term imprisonment, stoning, flogging, execution and being thrown from a mountain.

Shortly after the measure was enacted, for example, enforcers severely assaulted two women for going to the city market.

The vice and virtue mandate has dashed many Afghans’ hope of real change in the Taliban’s repressive policies. And it has cast serious doubt on how successful the international community has been in its efforts to improve the status of Afghan women.

In recent high-level talks with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, U.N. and U.S. officials caved on the Taliban’s demands for the complete exclusion of Afghan women from the talks. Just weeks later, the Taliban, seemingly emboldened, announced their new virtue and vice law.

These human rights violations run counter to religion and culture in Afghanistan, where women have a long history of fighting for their rights.

Today, there is perhaps no other country in the world that uniformly violates the human rights of women and girls to the level of the Taliban. But it’s not only the problem for the women and girls in Afghanistan. The protection of human rights and human dignity is a responsibility that falls to each one of us.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the 2024 election cycle, voters without children are under the microscope.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance has said that “childless cat ladies” and older adults without kids are “sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country.”

So it was notable that when pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, she didn’t simply express her support and leave it at that. She also called herself a “childless cat lady.”

Politicians and others often use the word “childless” as an umbrella term for people who do not have children. But as social scientists who study people without children, we know that this doesn’t capture some important nuances.

Using large-scale demographic data, we’ve found that there are many types of nonparents—and each has its own set of political priorities.

The range of nonparents

Only about 3% of Americans are truly childless, or what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls “involuntarily childless.” Most Americans who do not have children are not childless. They are some other type of nonparent. Social scientists often distinguish several types of nonparents:

• Childless people want children but cannot have them due to circumstances such as infertility.

• Not yet parents are people who do not have children yet, but plan to in the future. They tend to be younger.

• Undecided individuals aren’t sure whether they want to have children.

• Child-free people have decided they do not want children now or in the future.

These distinctions matter. When nonparents are combined into a single group, they seem demographically and politically similar to everyone else.

But each type of nonparent is affected by political issues differently. And some issues are especially consequential for child-free people.

The ramifications of Dobbs

Take abortion rights. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson ended a constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling limited access to reproductive health care in several states and created uncertainty in others.

Some politicians have expressed concerns about the fallout of the Dobbs decision. They’ve pointed to the inability for some not-yet-parents to access reproductive care if complications arise during pregnancy. They’ve also raised the alarm that Dobbs will lead to limits on access to in vitro fertilization for childless couples.

But these concerns are relevant only for people who want to have children. There is usually little talk among politicians and pundits about the importance of reproductive rights for child-free people who do not want to have children.

The share of Michigan adults identifying as child-free rose from 21% before Dobbs to nearly 26% immediately afterward. This increase occurred during a time when there was significant confusion about access to abortion in Michigan because state laws were ambiguous and being challenged in the courts.

Since Dobbs, there has also been a dramatic increase in vasectomies and tubal ligations nationwide. Some of this increase is the result of child-free people now turning to surgery to avoid having children.

Child-free people are overlooked in other areas, too, such as tax policy and in the workplace.

Child-free people pay federal income taxes alongside parents. But both Republican and Democratic presidential platforms have placed a heavy emphasis on expanding the child tax credit, which directly benefits only people who have or will have children. Child-free people work alongside parents. But parental status isn’t a protected category, which could be why child-free people tend to work longer hours and have less leeway to take time off.

Will a new bloc emerge?

Nonetheless, child-free people are primed to play an important role in American politics for several reasons.

First, there are a lot of them.

How many Americans are child-free depends on how you ask them. Data from nationwide face-to-face interviews suggest that around 10% of Americans are child-free. But data from anonymous surveys in Michigan and nationwide peg it at closer to 20% to 25%. If that’s the case, it could mean as many as 50 million to 60 million Americans are child-free.

Second, their numbers are growing. A range of studies suggest that every year, more Americans are reporting that they simply never want to have children.

Third, politicians’ derogatory comments about “childless” people have gotten the attention of child-free people. And they’re starting to organize. For example, Shannon Coulter, the influential activist behind the nonprofit group GrabYourWallet, is bringing them together through the nonpartisan Alliance of Childfree Voters.

It’s too soon to know whether child-free people can be thought of as a distinct voting bloc. But in our research, we found that child-free people in the swing state of Michigan lean liberal. While there are similar numbers of liberal and conservative parents in the state, child-free people who identify as liberal outnumber conservatives 2 to 1.

Given their size, growth, organization and liberal leanings, it may be time for American politicians to think more carefully about how child-free people fit in.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Divisive political opinions are everywhere these days, but entrepreneurs might be wise to bite their tongues.

In a recent analysis of 19,898 Kickstarter campaigns, we found that budding businesses that expressed political views attracted less funding than ones that stayed apolitical.

As professors who study entrepreneurship, we wanted to understand the link between political expression and crowdfunding success. So we looked at thousands of campaigns launched over a two-year period.

We searched the campaigns for subtle expressions of conservative values—”Still remembering that all lives matter, regardless of color or religion and hoping to have made my idea of sandwich shop clear,” to name one example—and more overt ones, like “Drain the Swamp and Defend MAGA Country.”

We did the same thing with subtle liberal perspectives—like “I have become fed up and irritated by the lack of equality and diversity within media”—and overt ones, like “I believe that art matters + and the magic is real. Also: Black lives matter.”

In the end, we found that every percentage-point increase in political speech was associated with a 9% decline in funds raised for conservatives and a 17% decline for liberals.

Our theory, which our findings supported, is that people don’t expect to see anyone sharing political beliefs in a business context. When entrepreneurs violate this expectation, it leads people to view them as unprofessional and ultimately hurts their crowdfunding performance.

The backlash against political speech doesn’t seem to affect everyone equally. Campaigns with third-party endorsements, such as Kickstarter’s “Project We Love” badge, were punished less, we found. Having photos or videos on a campaign page also seemed to reduce the negative effect. An entrepreneur’s prior successful experience was effective when leaning into a conservative, but not liberal, voice.

Why it matters

As entrepreneurs become increasingly vocal about politics, they should understand the potential costs of speaking authentically. Our study shows that funders expect entrepreneurs to be apolitical in crowdfunding and penalize those who express their political values. Although we looked specifically at Kickstarter campaigns, the implications for established businesses, which also seek investment, are obvious.

To be fair, our work also finds evidence that entrepreneurs who come across as more credible—thanks to third-party endorsements, say, or their use of multimedia—are less penalized for political speech. But in general, entrepreneurs should at least consider keeping mum on politics in their funding pitches to ensure they don’t hurt their chances.

What still isn’t known

While we focused on the effect of entrepreneurs’ political speech, a natural follow-up question is whether funders’ political views affect whether they invest in a project. Researchers know that conservatives and liberals approach decision-making quite differently. So we think it’s crucial that researchers turn to this question next. These types of studies will start to provide a more holistic view of how political beliefs affect crowdfunding.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Lowering the cost of health care and prescription drug prices and protecting Medicare and Social Security are among the most important issues for Americans in determining their vote for president, according to a new national West Health-Gallup Poll released today.

Nearly two-thirds say a candidate’s position on Medicare/Social Security (63%) is the single or among the most important issues, followed closely by health care costs (57%). Forty-three percent view access to mental health care as important, an emerging issue now seen as close to the level of importance as prescription drug prices (47%), which have been a concern for many years over multiple elections.

However, despite the importance of these issues to voters, two in three say health care is not yet receiving enough attention in the 2024 presidential campaign, and more Democrats (78%) and independents (66%) than Republicans (53%) hold this view. Only 6% of respondents say it’s getting too much attention, while 27% say it’s getting the right amount.

“Americans remain concerned over high health care prices and the future of Medicare and Social Security even though other issues dominate during this election cycle, and this is especially true for older Americans, a significant voting bloc,” said Timothy Lash, President, West Health Policy Center. “Americans across all political stripes want to know where candidates stand on these critical issues and do not think they’ve heard enough yet. It will be interesting to see how the candidates and political parties address this.”

Independent voters were slightly more likely to report trusting Kamala Harris over Donald Trump in addressing key health care issues, according to the survey. This was especially true for improving access to care and insurance coverage and strengthening Medicare. Independents were more than 10 points more likely to say they trust Harris over Trump when considering these issues.

It is notable that about a third of independents report not trusting either candidate on key health care issues. Republicans and Democrats generally fell along party lines, but more Democrats (about 90%) were trusting of their candidate than Republicans (about 70%).

When asked how likely it is that access to affordable health care will improve in the next five years, many Democrats express optimism, while Republicans and independents are more pessimistic. Fifty-eight percent of Democrats believe access is very or somewhat likely to improve, while majorities of Republicans (70%) and independents (64%) say improvement is not very or not at all likely.

Methodology

The West Health-Gallup Pre-Election Health care Survey was conducted via the web from Sept. 9-16, 2024, with 3,660 adults aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup Panel. For results based on the full sample, the margin of sampling error at the 95% confidence level is ±2.0 percentage points for response percentages around 50% and is ±1.2 percentage points for response percentages around 10% or 90%, design effect included. Reported subgroups will have a larger margin of error, typically ±3 to ±5 percentage points.

Gallup weighted the combined samples to correct for nonresponse. Non-response adjustments were made by adjusting the sample to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education and region. Demographic weighting targets were based on the most recent Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population.

In addition to sampling errors, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Undecided voters are less likely to cast their ballot, according to a new study which shows how the fragmentation of the political party system in the UK is fueling low turnout at elections.

The number of citizens undecided in how they’d vote has risen in Western democracies. People are becoming less partisan, meaning they have weaker ties to political parties. There are more parties on the ballot and more voter volatility.

The study, published in Electoral Studies, shows how election participation is lower when citizens are subject to high levels of competition for their vote. People in the electorate are ‘in competition’ when they have similar preferences for more than one party.

Dr. Hannah Bunting, from the University of Exeter’s Elections Centre, found these voters have a ten point lower likelihood of voting than those with a clear political preference. The probability of voting declines from 89.1 percent to 79.2 percent when people are deliberating between two or more parties.

Dr. Bunting said, “Voters are now more indecisive, more likely to switch parties, and generally more volatile and unpredictable in their behavior. My research shows low levels of voting may be related to the more complex choices people have to make, and people becoming more indecisive.”

The British Election Study’s internet panel suggests around 40 percent of voters are undecided. This new analysis shows they are also less likely to intend to vote.

The study says voter turnout improves when people have a partisan identity and pay greater attention to politics.

Dr. Bunting, who used ten years of British Election Study data for the study, said, “This is a positive sign for democracy. Citizens do seem to spend time deliberating between different parties during competitive elections. The expansion and complexity of choice can promote democracy if parties can convince voters to back them before election day.”

The study is also further evidence constituency marginality is not substantially related to individual turnout and partisanship is an important predictor of voting.

At the most recent general election in 2024, polling showed a significant proportion of the British population expressed that they did not know who they would vote for. Turnout at the 2024 general election was the lowest since the 59 percent in 2001.

Dr. Bunting said, “People used to say ‘I’m Labour’ or ‘I’m Tory’ but there are fewer and fewer people with that strong partisan identity now. This is coupled with a greater number of candidates and different types of parties on offer. All of this means people are more likely to abstain from voting. It creates a greater cognitive burden for citizens and this complexity feeds indecision which increases the likelihood of making no choice at all. A high number of undecided citizens may thus result in low turnout rates.”

The study shows people who have a partisan identity have a 29 percent probability of their vote being in competition between parties, whereas for non-partisans this was higher at 54.3 percent.

Those who pay the least attention to politics are 15 points more likely to be in competition than those who pay the greatest amount of attention. Men are less likely to be in competition, as are older citizens. Individual competitiveness is therefore driven by dealignment and low political engagement, alongside age and gender.

Instead of ending a group meeting asking if anyone has any questions, a professor at UT Arlington suggests asking participants if they can think of anything that might go wrong with the plan discussed.

“It helps get people thinking about who could potentially be harmed or if there is a part of the project we’re just not thinking about,” said Logan Watts, an assistant professor of psychology at UT Arlington and lead author on a new study exploring ethical decision-making within teams. “This helps people focus on potential issues before they can become ethical problems.”

The research is published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics.

Historically, studies on ethical decision-making have focused on individual researchers. However, researchers rarely work alone. Plus, studies on the psychology of groups have shown that people think and behave differently when they work as part of a team rather than alone, so it’s important to understand team dynamics.

“The integrity of scientific enterprises depends a great deal on faith that researchers will ‘play by the rules,'” said Watts. “But that trust can erode quickly when researchers are caught fabricating data, plagiarizing work, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, or engaging in poor research practices that can harm others.”

To better understand the ethics of team decision-making, Watts and fellow psychology assistant professor Michelle Martín-Raugh, along with graduate students Sampoorna Nandi and Rylee Linhardt, interviewed scientists working at a public research university, asking them about their experiences and observations with ethical dilemmas within research.

After recording the interviews, the team transcribed and coded all the data to look for common themes. The most prevalent dilemma reported was research misconduct, with 75% of participants reporting issues around data fabrication, falsifying information, or copying work from another researcher.

The second most reported ethical dilemma was around the protection of human subjects, with 55% of researchers saying they had experienced an issue where a team member was not following ethical procedures surrounding the protection of the rights and welfare of study participants. The participants said that issues could become awkward if the person acting unethically had more seniority over the other members.

Although the current study was exploratory in nature and needs additional research to validate the findings using an experimental design, Watts said it revealed a few tactics that may help teams perform more ethically. One takeaway is the idea of an “ethical champion” who can help the group ensure they are not deliberately or accidentally making ethical mistakes and can also serve as role models for other group members.

“Our study showed that in many groups, a person stepped up to be the ethical champion. This wasn’t a formal designation, but rather, a person who was willing to speak up about ethical values and norms,” Watts said. “In some groups, a team member may be more focused on results, not thinking about some decisions being right or wrong or whether someone could potentially be harmed. This ethical champion was someone who was willing to say something if they saw something amiss.”

Watts also emphasized the importance of fostering an environment where everyone feels empowered to voice concerns.

“It’s important for teams to create a culture of psychological safety within the research group so that people without power feel comfortable speaking up,” Watts said.

Farming is a notoriously hard profession with long hours spent operating dangerous equipment and performing other arduous tasks. New Rice University research finds that Indigenous farm employees—many of whom have legal status in the U.S. after moving from Latin America—may experience more physical pain on the job than undocumented workers.

Researchers Christina Diaz, associate professor of sociology, and Erick Samayoa, a sociology graduate student, are the authors of “Away from Home, Into the Fields: Assessing the Health of Undocumented and Indigenous Farmworkers,” which appears in a recent edition of Social Science & Medicine.

The researchers used data from the National Agricultural Worker Survey (including more than 20,000 respondents) to learn more about the lives of farm workers in the U.S., over 60% of whom are not in the U.S. legally and potentially susceptible to worse working conditions or exploitation.

Diaz and Samayoa found that undocumented workers actually reported better physical health than their Indigenous counterparts. Meanwhile, Indigenous workers were more likely than any other type of worker to report physical pain stemming from their profession.

The researchers said there are different reasons that these individuals may be dealing with more physical pain.

“First and foremost, individuals who migrate to the U.S.—as is the case with many undocumented workers—are usually in excellent health,” Diaz said. “They are youthful and vigorous enough to complete an arduous migration journey and have resources to migrate.”

Meanwhile, Indigenous populations face what Samayoa called a “cumulative disadvantage,” sometimes facing discrimination as Indigenous persons within Latin America prior to migration and once again after coming to the U.S.

“This can include a language barrier, as many of these individuals speak neither English nor Spanish, and as a result, cannot advocate for themselves in the way that many undocumented workers can,” Samayoa said. “We suspect that because this Indigenous population faces so much discrimination and so much socioeconomic difficulty, it may trump any of the benefits that legal status may offer them.”

The researchers say they hope this work sheds light on and will encourage more studies of the complexities of immigrant populations in the U.S. and how they face different challenges depending on their respective backgrounds.

The study was co-authored by Sergio Chavez, an associate professor of sociology at Rice, and Victoria Bejarano, a former University of Houston student.