“I Stepped Over A Dead Body …”: Latina Immigrant Narratives of Immigration and Poverty

Abstract

This qualitative study examines the lived experiences of Latina immigrants who settled in an area that enacted one of the United State's most draconian anti-immigrant initiatives—a law that would be a precursor for Arizona's SB 1070. Though this investigation was prompted by the law's adoption in 2007, interviews and 18 months of ethnographic observation with Latina immigrants (n = 16) found that it was only one in a patchwork of forces constricting work opportunity and threatening access to housing and food. Using critical phenomenology, I examine women's experiences of poverty both prior to immigration, and in the U.S. economy.

Keywords:

• Immigration
• Latinas
• economic justice
• critical phenomenology

Notes

The study was made possible with support of a grant from the Mason Project on Immigration of the George Mason College of Humanities and Social Sciences. My thanks to co-investigator, Debra Lattanzi Shutika.

1. This study included data from both Spanish- and English-speaking residents. Following Massey and Capoferro (2004), researchers used multiple data-gathering methods: (1) Review of local newspaper coverage of the immigration controversy, Census data, and an anti-immigrant group's newsletters (archival study); (2) ethnographic immersion by the co-principal investigators and 12 students; (3) administration of ethnosurvey data collection instrument (n = 103) to non-Latino, English-speaking residents; (4) writing extensive field notes in conjunction with each interview; and (5) administration of life histories with non-Latino, English-speaking residents (n = 21), 19 of which were conducted by the principal investigators.