Racial capitalism and overlapping colonialities: histories of Indigenous women’s mobilities in Mexico/U.S. migration

Keywords: Indigeneity, race, migration, gender
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Studies of Mexican migration to the United States emphasize rural men as the quintessential migrant protagonists. While historically men have migrated more than women, in this presentation I challenge the image of the predominantly male, non-ethnic migrant subject. To do so, I draw on ethnographic research with indigenous Mexican women who established migrant networks in the United States starting in the 1960s. I argue that the story of these women is not an anomaly, but rather a case study indicative of a broader blindness to how questions of gender and ethnicity have played into the production of surplus value at different moments in the history of U.S/Mexican migration. I argue that this is in part due to the way overlapping colonialities have shaped U.S./Mexican research agendas. One the one hand, settler-colonial logics within academic disciplines in the United States have overlooked the existence of indigenous peoples; on the other, legacies of colonialism and nationalism within Mexico have privileged peasant identities over indigenous identities, obscuring indigenous peoples as a category of analysis. Combined, they have failed to explore how specific gendered and racialized geographies have been generated through racial capitalism.