Matching Items (2)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Ethnic Studies
- Creators: Romero, Mary
Description
This dissertation examines contemporary issues that 18 (im)migrant university students faced during a time of highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border relations while living in Arizona during the time of this dissertation research. Utilizing critical race theory and public sphere theory as theoretical frameworks, the project addresses several related research questions. The first is how did (im)migrant university students describe their (im)migrant experience while they lived in the U.S. and studied at a large southwestern university? Second, what can (im)migrant university student experiences tell us about (im)migrant issues? Third, what do (im)migrant university students want people to know about (im)migration from reading their story?
Three conceptual constructs, each composed of three categories, that described the different (im)migrant experiences in this study emerged through data analysis. The first of these conceptual constructs was the racialized/ing (im)migrant experience that categorically was divided into systemic exclusions, liminal exclusions, and micro-social contextual exclusions. The second concept that emerged was the passed/ing (im)migrant experience where (im)migrant university students shared that they felt they had a systemic pathway to citizenship and/or that their immigration authorization gave them privilege. This concept was also categorically divided into systemic inclusions, liminal inclusions, and micro-social contextual inclusions. The last concept was the negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience, which described ways that (im)migrant university students negotiated their space/place in the public sphere while attending a large, public university in Arizona. As with the other two concepts, three categories emerged in relation to negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience: systemic negotiations, liminal negotiations, and micro-social contextual negotiations. It is (im)migrant university student experiences that give individuals a better understanding of the complexities that surround immigration. The (im)migrant narratives also highlight that inclusion and exclusion from the public sphere is a complex and dynamic process because all (im)migrant students, including U.S. citizens, experienced moments of inclusion and exclusion from the U.S. public sphere.
Three conceptual constructs, each composed of three categories, that described the different (im)migrant experiences in this study emerged through data analysis. The first of these conceptual constructs was the racialized/ing (im)migrant experience that categorically was divided into systemic exclusions, liminal exclusions, and micro-social contextual exclusions. The second concept that emerged was the passed/ing (im)migrant experience where (im)migrant university students shared that they felt they had a systemic pathway to citizenship and/or that their immigration authorization gave them privilege. This concept was also categorically divided into systemic inclusions, liminal inclusions, and micro-social contextual inclusions. The last concept was the negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience, which described ways that (im)migrant university students negotiated their space/place in the public sphere while attending a large, public university in Arizona. As with the other two concepts, three categories emerged in relation to negotiated/ing (im)migrant experience: systemic negotiations, liminal negotiations, and micro-social contextual negotiations. It is (im)migrant university student experiences that give individuals a better understanding of the complexities that surround immigration. The (im)migrant narratives also highlight that inclusion and exclusion from the public sphere is a complex and dynamic process because all (im)migrant students, including U.S. citizens, experienced moments of inclusion and exclusion from the U.S. public sphere.
ContributorsCantú, Elizabeth A (Author) / Brouwer, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Margolis, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Romero, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation examines the embodied experiences of domestic workers and their children as they emerged in organizing campaigns aimed at achieving a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in California. I analyze the ways domestic worker organizers have historically conceptualized their movements around demands for dignified labor and immigration reform. I argue that their demands for protections and rights force them into a contradictory space that perpetuates vulnerability and recasts illegality—a space where domestic workers’ bodies get continuously figured as exploited and in pain in order to validate demands for rights. I trace this pattern in organizational survey material across generations, where worker’s voices resisted prefigured mappings of their bodies in pain, and where they laid out their own demands for a movement that challenged normative frameworks of fair labor and United States citizenship that continue to center race and gender in the transnational mobility of migrant women from Mexico and Central America. Furthermore, I explore the embodied experiences of domestic workers’ children, and the embedded power relations uncovered in their memories as they narrate their childhood accompanying their mothers to work. Their memories provided an affective landscape of memory where the repetitive, and demeaning aspects of domestic work are pried apart from western, colonial arrangements of power. I argue that their collective embodied knowledge marks a reframing of pain where transfiguration is possible and transformative patterns of becoming are prioritized. I propose interpreting these collective, embodied memories as a constellation of shimmers—luminous points that align to expose the relationships between workers, their children, employers, and their families, and the specific context in which they were produced. Altogether, they create what I call a brown luminosity—forces activated by their mothers’ labor that created multiple worlds of possibilities for their children, resulting in nomadic memories which move beyond victimizing their mother’s bodies to enable an ever-changing perspective of the ways their labor has radically transformed homes, livelihoods, and transnational spaces.
ContributorsPerez, Nancy (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Romero, Mary (Committee member) / Fish, Jennifer N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019