Mujeres en Movimiento: Exercising Substantive Citizenship Through Place-based Embodied Experiences

• In Event: Roundtable: Critical Criminology: Theory and Application

Abstract

This urban ethnographic study uses inductive analysis through fieldwork, participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews, photographs, and content analysis approach to better understand the trajectory and experiences of Mujeres en Movimiento (Women in Movement). It aims to shed light on a group of female immigrants from South America with a hybrid transnational identity currently living in Corona, NY. The women come together daily to promote overall wellness, solidarity, and social inclusion. As a result of their subordinate position in relation to gender, ethnicity, residency status, social and cultural standing, they feel invisible and left out from the community decision-making process while feeling subjected to social control. The women voice their grievances by breaking from fear, and symbolically crossing the US/Mexico border as an act of resistance, while empowering themselves, developing leadership and advocacy skills. By creating alternative spaces of embodied experiences through the way of subjectivity, the women collectively mobilize and challenge cultural globalization and corporate power, while fighting for the right to exercise substantive citizenship through dancing, cycling, and activism in reference to body politics, forging a path to greater civic engagement, new expressions of democracy, and ultimately emerging as autonomous actors for social change.

Author

• Lisandra De Fraga, The Graduate Center / John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY