Latina Immigrant Mothers in New and Old Destinations: "Comunidad" and Gendered Forms of Belonging

This comparative analysis draws on ethnographic research with Latina, immigrant women in two very different locations—“Squire Town,” a community in Northern California with a long history of Latino/a farmworker... [ view full abstract ]

This comparative analysis draws on ethnographic research with Latina, immigrant women in two very different locations—“Squire Town,” a community in Northern California with a long history of Latino/a farmworker settlement, and historic Williamsburg, Virginia a recent destination for Latino/a immigrants in the “Nuevo South.” In both communities Latina mothers are incorporated as workers in low-wage, precarious sectors of the economy—as farmworkers in Squire Town and as service workers in Williamsburg— but face exclusion and marginalization due to their racial and gender disadvantages as well as their precarious immigration status. We place the cases of Latina mothers in these distinct social and geographic contexts within the same analytical framework in order to explore the question: What do these cases reveal about the gendered dimensions of negotiating inclusion and belonging within particular social and place-specific contexts?
While the affluent community of Williamsburg, Virginia has a well-developed service infrastructure, Latina immigrant mothers' access to services is inhibited by factors such as low density, suburban sprawl and lack of reliable public transportation, restrictive eligibility requirements, and cultural and language barriers. In the case of farmworker mothers in Squire Town, services, such as public clinics and schools, have been cut or eliminated in their communities. Their settlement on unincorporated land further contributes to the precarities they face in daily life.
In Squire Town farm worker mothers participated in grassroots efforts to gain civil and political rights as well as access to public resources, including healthcare. Through their organizing efforts they called for the democratization of the health care system and decision-making process, in so doing lay claims to their and their families’ membership in the community.
In Williamsburg where immigrants of Latin American descent are more recent arrivals and constitute a much smaller proportion of the population, there have not been visible forms of collective action around demands related to social reproductive needs. And yet Latina mothers have engaged in significant community-building activities in their role as caretakers of the family. They have ventured into new institutional spaces, interfacing with local schools, social services, clinics, and hospitals (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). They have taken the lead in the informal and uncertain negotiations with teachers, healthcare and service providers, and apartment managers. In cases in which their partners have been deported or detained, they have mobilized the resources necessary to hold their families together. Through such activities they lay claim to “place” and “rootedness” which push back against forms of institutional and social exclusion and control
We argue that theoretical attention to the sphere and practices of social reproduction bring into focus gendered forms of agency through which women, as caretakers of the family, make belonging “happen.” Through their care-taking role women make claims to rootedness and defy boundaries of exclusion that come crashing down on their family lives. Our cases reveal that while social reproduction is an arena through which women and families are policed and regulated, it is also through the activities of social reproduction that women emerge as agents of belonging.