Pushing the Boundaries: Queer Immigrant Women in Leadership

• In Event: 277 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Strategies and Tactics 1

Abstract

Recent influx of immigrants marks a demographic shift. However, a large part of the scholarly dialogue focuses on working-age immigrants who represent the back-bone of our American economy. This ethnographic research takes the conversation in a new direction by focusing on queer undocumented young women at the head of an immigrant youth-led organization in Chicago. Employing three analytic frames from Garfinkel, Anzaldua, and Foucault, specifically, the public ceremonies of degradation, third spaces, and power as a tug of war, this research captures how these women's social location as queer and undocumented shapes their organizing strategies and presents the ways in which their organizing efforts contribute to the analytic frames from the aforementioned scholars.

Author

• Yunuen Rodriguez Rodriguez, Independent Scholar