Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Denise A. Segura is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Patricia Zavella is Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“A deeply felt and thoroughly researched work, Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands brings together some of the most important feminist voices in the field of immigration and transnational studies. I think Gloria AnzaldÚa would have been proud to see how the authors of this book took her concept of the borderlands and grounded it ethnographically in the sorrows, struggles, and dreams of contemporary Chicana and Mexican women. A timely and courageous book that speaks to the major issue of our time-the search for home across and between and despite borders.”-Ruth Behar, author of Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story “Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella have compiled a spectacular collection on gender, migration, sexuality, work, and family. Timely, provocative, and imaginative, the essays in Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands will become essential readings across a variety of (inter)disciplines: Latina/o studies, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, Latin American studies, American studies, urban planning, and public policy.”-Vicki Ruiz, author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America “[A] worthy and much-needed contribution to debates about women, gender, and migration in the borderlands, which, as the editors point out, remains understudied, displaced, or at times simply ignored. Also notable is the interdisciplinary nature of the compilation, which brings a number of significant contributions into a shared space and thus sets a precedent for further interdisciplinary dialogue. . . . The interdisciplinary mix makes the book attractive to a variety of academic fields such as political science and international relations, Chicana/o studies, Latin American and Latino studies, border studies, sociology, and human geography . . . . It is certainly a valuable contribution to studies of women and/or the U.S.-Mexican borderlands in each of these disciplines.” - Marie Woodling (Hispanic American Historical Review) “This collection is important not only because it sites gender front and center but also because it adds flesh and bone to the borderlands concept by bringing a series of issues into discussion: cultural representations; identity construction and reconstruction; structural, personal, and symbolic violence; sexuality; popular culture; transnational social networks; and marriage and motherhood.” - Lynn Stephen (Latin American Research Review)

• About the Series ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction 1Part 1. Borderlands as Site of Struggle Toward a Planetary Civil Society / Rosa Linda Fregoso 35A Glass Half Empty: Latina Reproduction and Public Discourse / Leo R. Chavez 67Illegal 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 106The Value of Immigrant Life / Jonathan Xavier India 134Part 2. The Topography of Violence Manufacturing Sexual Subjects: “Harassment,” Desire, and Discipline on a Maquiladora Shopfloor / Leslie Salzinger 161The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women, and Maquiladoras / Melissa W. Wright 184Rape 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 224Part 3. Flexible Accumulation and Resistance Changing Constructions of Sexuality and Risk: Migrant Mexican Women Farmworkers in California / Xochitl Castaneda and Patricia Zavella 249Space, Gender, and Work: Home-Based Workers in Mexico / Faranak Miraftab 269Mexican 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 306Part 4. Family Formations and Transnational Social Networks Transborder Families and Gendered Trajectories of Migration and Work / Norma Ojeda de la Pena 327Women, Migration, and Household Survival Strategies: Mixtec Women in Tijuana / Laura Velasco Ortiz 341Single-Parent Families: Choice or Constraint? The Formation of Female-Headed Households in Mexican Shanty Towns / Sylvia Chant 360Working 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 388Part 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 438Unruly Passions: Poetics, Performance, and Gender in the Ranchera Song / Olga Najera-Ramirez 456Becoming Selena, Becoming Latina / Deborah Paredez 477Cyberbrides and Global Imaginaries: Mexican Women’s Turn from the National to the Foreign / Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel 503Bibliography 521Contributors 585Index 587