New Forms Of Extreme Vulnerability

In the annual household survey, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics earlier this year, it was reported that 84 out of 100 incidents of rape or sexual misconduct were reported by women (FiveThirtyEight). In most cases, when women immigrate to the United States they are either alone or have paid a great deal of money to have a smuggler help them on their journey to reach the US and Mexico border, which means that they are in a situation where they are very vulnerable, which can lead to them getting raped, or even murdered. Throughout the novel “Enrique’s Journey”, Nazario writes about how Enrique witnessed the rape of a seventeen-year-old girl named Wendy while heading to America. She too was immigrating when Chiapas, a gang group, took her. “‘If you scream,’ he says, ‘we cut you to bits.’ Then he rapes her.” (97). Having Nazario write about the gang rape of a young woman immigrating to America has a very powerful effect on the reader because it shows the trauma that thousands of women go through when looking for a better

Throughout history, women have faced with a plethora of challenges that called for them to transcend society’s limitations. One of these situations was the challenges presented by the terrible living and factory conditions in New York City at the turn of the 20th century. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire took the lives of 146 immigrant women and devastated New York; and due to the theft-preventative measures of locking the doors to the factory, owner, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck led to even more lives being lost. This situation, although terrible, was not that uncommon. As these immigrant women arrived in the United States, there would be a typical and similar experience among many; one that started with the problems offered upon arrival,

I do not fit in one box on a federal checklist, I am of several cultures. My experience of listening to my Grandmother’s stories made me acutely aware of this fact. I am not just an American, I am a Mexican-American. Living in the Rio Grande Valley, I am part of this “third country” that Anzaldua calls the borderland (Anzaldua Borderlands 1987, 3). In this third country where the “third world grates against the first and bleeds”, the spilt blood creates a new country; an uneasy fusion of both cultures (Anzaldua Borderlands 1987, 3). In my case I was born to a father from Mexico and a mother from America, I am part of the third culture, the Mexican-American. I am proud to be an American and a Hispanic, yet America devalues me because of my heritage.

Cultural expectations have prevented humans from being able to lead their own lives the way they see fit. Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros are two notorious Mexican-American writers that wrote extensively about cultural borders and expectations. Anzaldúa came from the Mexico-Texas border, was a cultural and feminist theorist as well as English scholar, while Cisneros also comes from a Latino background and speaks from her cultural hybridity to illustrate cultural expectations. In this paper, I will use Anzaldúa’s “Borderlands / La Frontera” as a lens for Cisnero’s short story, “Woman Hollering Creek” to draw connections of cultural and gender expectations between two different genres of text.

Globalization: a process of interaction between the social, economic and political systems of different nations, a process powered by international trade and investment. Some assert that globalization encourages the spread of more “enlightened and egalitarian” Western values and international tolerance, while others believe that this phenomenon harms more than it helps and fosters an uncontrolled and abusive economic environment. There is no shortage of opinions on the matter, though one sure point of fact is that globalization affects all aspects of modern life, including the murky world of gendered violence. Between the signing of NAFTA in 1992 and the middle of 2002, just shy of three hundred blue-collar female factory workers were murdered in the border town of Juarez, Mexico. However, these numbers are simply the tip of the iceberg when compared to the four-hundred-and-fifty additional disappearances during that decade, a grand total that is only increasing with each passing year. In short, these murders eventually sparked international intrigue and distress, forcing the world to take a closer look at some of the uglier consequences of globalization. Essentially, the femicides of Juarez are simply a symptom of a patriarchal society unconcerned with the lives of its workforce, a culture that values products more than the people who produce them: the overlapping timelines of the Juarez

Lydia’s Open Door by American Anthropologist Patty Kelly is an intriguing case study about both the hidden and not so hidden aspects of sex work in Chiapas, Mexico. Her book proves the usefulness of ethnographic works where she engages with unconventional ways of knowing in order to determine the complex relationships that help to reproduce gender inequality. Lydia’s Open Door contextualizes prostitution within a political and economic framework revealing how it is impossible to diagnose one without the others. She uses both macro and micro-analysis to deconstruct the variability in how prostitution is practiced, regulated and perceived through space and time. Throughout her ethnography she discusses how globalization and

This article shows the way Central American immigrant women living in Tapachula in order to examine the gap between written policy and its execution. Often those women have to seek for services and important documents for themselves and their family. Immigrant women are blocked, delayed, and discouraged from accessing their rights to legal identity, healthcare, and regularization of their immigration status and other services, not because of restrictive laws, but as a result of negative and confusing institutional interactions with low to middle level officials. The author argues that, low to middle level officials action reveals the importance of a form of over official, subtle through which immigrant women are denied rights they are entitled

Although immigrant women play a big role in America’s society and economy, they have been constantly mistreated and looked down upon throughout history. Not only do they face the burden of the stratifications that their gender entails but they also struggle to adopt the American culture and norms. America was viewed as the land of opportunities and economic prosperity, a perspective that draws in many immigrant women who were willing to leave their families and possessions to come to this foreign country in hopes of a better life. In America, they faced many challenges as they not only had to work long hours but also took care of their families and do housework as well. They struggled to make a standard living out of low wage jobs and assimilating into America’s society. Today, the treatment of immigrant women has improved greatly as they have stood together and fought for their rights. Immigrant women have built communities and held strikes for better pay and treatment. Although America has made great strides in improving treatment of immigrant women, there is still social injustice. Immigrant women have come a long way from the first time they entered America until now, but their stories are often left untold and omitted from American history.

The story illustrates the overlapping influences of women’s status and roles in Mexican culture, and the social institutions of family, religion, economics, education, and politics. In addition, issues of physical and mental/emotional health, social deviance and crime, and social and personal identity are

Dana Raigrodski is a Lecturer and Director of the General LL.M. Program at the University of Washington School of Law, as well as the Executive Director of Global Affairs at the Law School. She serves as a Commissioner on the Washington State Supreme Court Gender & Justice Commission and as member of the University of Washington Women’s Center Anti-Trafficking Task Force. Dr. Raigrodski’s scholarship and research interests examine human trafficking, migration and globalization, criminal procedure and jurisprudence, feminist legal theories, and law and development. She teaches courses on law and globalization, American legal system and research methods, and comparative legal studies. Prior to joining academia, Dr. Raigrodski practiced law for

Jodie Michelle Lawston is the chair and professor of women studies in Cal State University San Marcos. Her research involves issues of women’s incarceration, immigrant detention, political and social activism, and most recently, women’s health. Some of her work include “Razor wire women: prisoners, activists, scholars, and artists”, “Sister Outside: Radical Activists for Women Prisoners”, and “Living together, living apart: mixed-status families and US immigration policy”. Ruben R. Murillo is a Professor in the Spanish department at University of San Diego. Murillo doesn’t have other work other than the article “The Discursive Figuration of U.S. Supremacy in Narratives Sympathetic to Undocumented Immigrants”, that he wrote along with Lawston.

The focus of Wells-Barnett on the subordination of women was unique in that it looked at the problem not only through the lens of sex, but of race, class and geographic location. Undocumented immigration, commonly known as “illegal immigration”, is a hot button topic in American politics today. In the last ten years candidates for political office, political parties and interests groups have used this issue to gain support for their cause, resulting in a heated ongoing debate that affects the estimated 20 million undocumented immigrants that live and work in the United States today. What has become lost in the majority of these discussions is the diminished quality of life these immigrants are forced to endure due to failed social policy of US lawmakers, as well as the many positive contributions immigrants from all countries have on the economy and culture of the United States. Advocates for undocumented immigrants are faced with similar challenges faced by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Both women fought for equality for those who did not have equal status in society and in the institutions that make up American government. The application of their theories to the

The citizens of the United States on the border of Mexico viewed the Mexicans as alien in their country (Bardacke, 167). This notion persisted even after the signing of the NAFTA. This is because, the mindset of the people originally viewed the Mexicans as aliens and it was difficult to treat them as equals with the American citizens. This is the same reason as to why Mexicans could only be absorbed in the lowly paying jobs and their pay would be less than what would be paid an American at the same level (Douglas & Pren, 6). The sufferings that the Mexican underwent at the hand of NAFTA and the struggle they underwent to get economic, political and social recognition can be compared to the struggles that Chicana women underwent to acquire recognition. These efforts culminated in the formation of the feminist movement spearheaded by the women of color (Garcia,

Violence takes many forms: it can be physical, psychological, sexual, economic, and even within families, or combinations of one or more of these. In most cases, the violence has been “acceptable” because of the cultural traditions that are largely respected. However, with the increasing emergence of the women’s movement internationally and even within Mexico itself, many Mexican males regard their roles as belittled. There has been a subtle and sometimes obvious backlash against the women’s movement, especially if women have independent living or income possibilities. In a culture in which violence is the norm, beatings, rape, torture, mutilation, and even murder are frequently overlooked. This has been painfully evident in the cases of mass murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez.

Women made vulnerable by poverty are most susceptible to the sex industry because they lack the resources, the education, and the economic alternatives to pursue other work possibilities. The lack of education diminishes women’s potential to gain paid employment, and desperately consent to prostitution as their survival strategy.