The (re)productive dimension of a gendered deportation regime and immigration enforcement in Texas

Abstract

In Austin, Texas since 2006, a coalition of immigrant rights organizations and allies has fought against deportation and immigrant detention. As has been found elsewhere, ­immigrant women with precarious legal statuses were ­overrepresented in the local immigrant rights movement. This article questions how despite high rates of deportation these women, have become active political agents. Building on scholarship that analyzes the U.S. immigration system as a highly gendered and racialized complex, and on the ­literature on intimate economies and geopolitics, I claim that the subject positions of noncitizen women are complex and based not only on gender, race, or sexual orientation but also on their ‘reproductive capital’. The latter, since it links reproductive and economic productivity, allows for consideration of gendered immigrant subject formations that influence immigration governance at the local and state level. I will analyze how Latin American noncitizen immigrant women in Texas were constructed as either ‘potential mothers of citizens’—allowing them to become activists and engage in the local political arena—or as ‘detainable and profitable mothers of noncitizens’—depending on their reproductive capital.

Keywords:

• Gender
• immigrant women
• reproductive capital
• reproductive trajectories
• Texas

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rocío A. Castillo

Rocío A. Castillo is an assistant professor (Cátedra CONACyT) at the Center for Gender Studies of El Colegio de México since November 2018. Her research interests relate to gender, collective action and social movements, the socio-anthropological study of emotions, subjectivity, feminism, and migratory studies. She has dedicated herself to investigating organizational efforts of women in different precarious contexts from a gender perspective and with an emphasis on the transformations of subjectivity and its emotional dimensions. Currently her research agenda focuses on the study of young and urban feminisms in Mexico.