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Original Articles

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

Pages 1-13 | Published online: 11 Jan 2013
 

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.

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.

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