2026-05-17T05:36:50Zhttps://keep.lib.asu.edu/oai/request

oai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-2016232025-05-12T19:35:22Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items

201623 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.2.N.201623 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved 2025 42 pages Masters Thesis Academic theses en Aros, Gabriela Coronado, Irasema Linton, Mellissa Lara-Valencia, Francisco Arizona State University Partial requirement for: M.A., Arizona State University, 2025 Field of study: Transborder Studies This paper focuses on how the surveillance regime along the U.S.-Mexico border influences motherhood practices and in what ways it affects the socialization, cultural understandings, and decision-making processes of those in mothering roles in their border communities. Motherhood is complex and exists on an individual plane as well as in context with the lived space and time. The goal was to find out where surveillance, border, and gender studies intersect along the 100-mile border enforcement zone North of the U.S.-Mexico border. Specific strategies those in mothering roles employ to navigate and negotiate their roles and responsibilities under the influence of border surveillance are laid out, and a typology of motherhood in the border space is created. This typology lays out the different types of motherhood roles that exist on the border and acts as a guide to understanding the mothering process. The border is a site that perpetuates othering through the weaponization of various surveillance methods. The constant threat of the surveillance state forms a unique lived experience for those situated in borderlands. From a border studies perspective, bordering and debordering practices are both physical and symbolic and happen due to proximity to the border. Through a gender studies lens, a foundation is set to help uncover what motherhood looks like in these spaces as well as the gendered expectations associated with parenthood and ideologies of motherhood that must be considered. This analysis provides definitions of motherhood, and how these develop in different spaces, along with the simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibilization of brown bodies on the border and the ways motherhood roles are assumed as a defense mechanism. Women's Studies Gender Motherhood Surveillance U.S.-Mexico Border Women Motherhood and the Watchful Eye The Impact of U.S.-Mexico Border Control on Mothers in Borderlands