Full Description
Women's migration within Mexico and from Mexico to the United States is increasing; nearly as many women as men are migrating. This development gives rise to new social negotiations, which have not been well examined in migration studies until now. This pathbreaking reader analyzes how economically and politically displaced migrant women assert agency in everyday life. Scholars across diverse disciplines interrogate the socioeconomic forces that propel Mexican women into the migrant stream and shape their employment options; the changes that these women are making in homes, families, and communities; and the "structural violence" that they confront in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands broadly conceived—all within the economic, social, cultural, and political interstices of the two countries.This reader includes twenty-three essays—two of which are translated from the Spanish—that illuminate women's engagement with diverse social and cultural challenges. One contributor critiques the statistical fallacy of nativist discourses within the United States that portray Chicana and Mexican women's fertility rates as "out of control." Other contributors explore the relation between sexual violence and women's migration from rural areas to urban centers within Mexico, the ways that undocumented migrant communities challenge conventional notions of citizenship, and young Latinas' commemorations of the late, internationally renowned singer Selena. Several essays address workplace intimidation and violence, harassment and rape by U.S. border patrol agents and maquiladora managers, sexual violence, and the brutal murders of nearly two hundred young women near Ciudad Juárez. This rich collection highlights both the structural inequities faced by Mexican women in the borderlands and the creative ways they have responded to them.
Contributors. Ernestine Avila, Xóchitl Castañeda, Sylvia Chant, Leo R. Chavez, Cynthia Cranford, Adelaida R. Del Castillo, Sylvanna M. Falcón, Gloria González-López, Maria de la Luz Ibarra, Jonathan Xavier Inda, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Eithne Luibheid, Victoria Malkin, Faranak Miraftab, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Norma Ojeda de la Peña, Deborah Paredez, Leslie Salzinger, Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel, Denise A. Segura, Laura Velasco Ortiz, Melissa W. Wright, Patricia Zavella
Contents
About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Part 1. Borderlands as Site of Struggle
Toward a Planetary Civil Society / Rosa Linda Fregoso 35
A Glass Half Empty: Latina Reproduction and Public Discourse / Leo R. Chavez 67
Illegal Status and Social Citizenship: Thoughts on Mexican Immigrants in a Postnational World / Adelaida R. Del Castillo 92
"Looking Like a Lesbian": The Organization of Sexual Monitoring at the United States-Mexican Border / Eithne Luibheid 106
The Value of Immigrant Life / Jonathan Xavier India 134
Part 2. The Topography of Violence
Manufacturing Sexual Subjects: "Harassment," Desire, and Discipline on a Maquiladora Shopfloor / Leslie Salzinger 161
The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women, and Maquiladoras / Melissa W. Wright 184
Rape as a Weapon of War: Militarized Rape at the US-Mexico Border / Sylvanna M. Falcon 203
"Nunca he dejada de tener terror": Sexual Violence in the Lives of Mexican Immigrant Women / Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez 224
Part 3. Flexible Accumulation and Resistance
Changing Constructions of Sexuality and Risk: Migrant Mexican Women Farmworkers in California / Xochitl Castaneda and Patricia Zavella 249
Space, Gender, and Work: Home-Based Workers in Mexico / Faranak Miraftab 269
Mexican Immigrant Women and the New Domestic Labor / Maria de la Luz Ibarra 286
"Aqui estamos y no nos vamos" Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles and New Citizenship Claims / Cynthia Cranford 306
Part 4. Family Formations and Transnational Social Networks
Transborder Families and Gendered Trajectories of Migration and Work / Norma Ojeda de la Pena 327
Women, Migration, and Household Survival Strategies: Mixtec Women in Tijuana / Laura Velasco Ortiz 341
Single-Parent Families: Choice or Constraint? The Formation of Female-Headed Households in Mexican Shanty Towns / Sylvia Chant 360
Working at Motherhood: Chicana and Mexican Immigrant Mothers and Employment / Denise A. Segura 368
"I'm Here, but I'm There": The Meanings of Latina Transnational Motherhood / Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila 388
Part 5. Transculturation and Identity in Daily Life
Reproduction of Gender Relations in the Mexican Migrant Community of New Rochelle, New York / Victoria Malkan 415
"En el norte la mujer manda": Gender, Generation, and Geography in a Mexican Transnational Community / Jennifer S. Hirsch 438
Unruly Passions: Poetics, Performance, and Gender in the Ranchera Song / Olga Najera-Ramirez 456
Becoming Selena, Becoming Latina / Deborah Paredez 477
Cyberbrides and Global Imaginaries: Mexican Women's Turn from the National to the Foreign / Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel 503
Bibliography 521
Contributors 585
Index 587
