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

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

“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.”, “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.”

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.