Date of Award

2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Sociology

First Advisor

Dana Garbarski

Second Advisor

Maria Akchurin

Abstract

Residents of Chicago’s Latine barrios often describe their neighborhoods as places of familiarity and safety—sites defined by both personal independence and collective solidarity, where daily life is marked by a sense of belonging and mutual support. Yet, residents also contend daily with overlapping social and environmental stressors. While urban, medical, and environmental sociologists have each shown that place matters, their findings remain siloed and rarely integrated to illuminate the everyday realities of Latine neighborhoods. As a result, we lack a systematic analysis of how people living in Chicago’s Latine barrios make sense of and cope with multiple, simultaneous stressors. I argue that integrating sociological and psychological scholarship on stress into urban, medical, and environmental sociology can expand our current understanding of the relationships between place and experience, neighborhood and health, and objective exposures and (inter)subjective appraisals of neighborhood risk, clarifying the many points at which meanings of place are constructed, revised, and acted upon in everyday barrio life. Three sets of research questions motivate my dissertation: (1) What aspects of the neighborhood do people living in Latine barrios recognize as sources of joy, and what do they identify as sources of stress? (2) How do people evaluate social and environmental stressors in Latine barrios? To what extent do individuals rely on others when evaluating stressors? (3) How do people cope with these stressors? What patterns emerge in coping strategies among neighbors? Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and 35 in-depth and photo-elicitation interviews, I detail the many overlapping neighborhood stressors residents of Hermosa and Gage Park face. In Hermosa, ambient strains include gentrification, family separation due to deportation, gang violence, garbage accumulation, noise and air pollution, and (for a few) flooding. In Gage Park, residents reported similar sources of stress, with the main difference being more frequent chronic strains tied to meeting basic needs, such as housing and food insecurity, and low-quality employment. I offer a typology of the most common ways people evaluate simultaneous neighborhood stressors: relative appraisal—assessing harm, threat, or challenge by comparing one stressor to others; retrospective appraisal—interpreting current stressors in light of past experiences; and routine-based appraisal—evaluating stressors based on their frequency and disruption to daily routines. Family members, significant others, and even mobile apps like Citizen, which provides real-time crime and incident alerts, shape how people evaluate risk and stressors. Finally, I show that coping strategies depend on residents’ sense of control over the problem, the stakes involved, and the perceived effectiveness of strategies used in the past. Coping is also shaped by beliefs about who is responsible for addressing a given stressor. This research demonstrates that in Latine barrios, residents’ appraisals of social and environmental stressors involve ongoing negotiations between lived experiences, personal and cultural values, shared understandings among neighbors, and the immediate built and natural environment—all shaped by residents’ individual and collective social position in the U.S.

Download

Included in

Sociology Commons

Share

COinS