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.