Relational Gentrification? Mexican American Women and Activism in a Latino Barrio

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Abstract

Women of color are disproportionately impacted by tight housing markets and, by extension, gentrification. Simultaneously, women of color are central to anti-gentrification movements in the barrio. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with anti-gentrification activists this paper seeks to locate immigrant, Mexican women within gentrification scholarship and within growing literature on perspectives of gentrifiers. Although higher levels of education are understood as part of overall middle-class status driving Latino-led gentrification in the barrio, “on the ground” this educational attainment is attenuated by macroeconomic factors and individual immigration status and reduced returns on undergraduate education in the present economic landscape. Exploring how anti-gentrification activists perceive themselves in this process contributes to scholarship on gentrification and a fledging sub-focus examining the various contradictions presented by the social location of gentrifiers. I argue these narratives by women of color activists describes a form of relational gentrification.

Author

• Alfredo Huante, University of Denver