The household water insecurity nexus: Portraits of hardship and resilience in U.S-Mexico border colonias

Abstract

This article contributes to the growing body of research examining the complex experiences of water insecurity in low-income households in the global north. I present a schematic, and evidence to support it, for a household water-insecurity nexus in U.S-Mexico border colonias, according to which water insecurity brings forth, influences, and interacts with a number of household burdens. Drawing from eight months of field research in communities that lack connections to piped water and sewerage, I rely on ethnographic portraiture to demonstrate how water insecurity at the household level exacerbates an array of hardships experienced by low-income families. These hardships relate to household budgets, health, time, and stress. In conversation with other qualitative case studies presented in the fields of geography, anthropology, and sociology, I argue that household water insecurity is both patterned, in that it influences many hardships beyond just quality and supply, and particular, in that each site experiences hardships that are unique to contexts such as culture, geography, and ecology. I contend that a comprehensive view of water insecurity’s many negative ramifications within low-income households strengthens arguments for the basic human right to water, making them more urgent, and bringing them into sharper relief.