Indigenous Women Migrants: Navigating the Shadowy Space of Neoliberal Multicriminalism

• In Event: Latin American Indigenous Futures

Abstract

Indigenous women migrants from Latin America suffer human rights violations at every step: in their homes, where violence and impunity compel them to migrate; as they cross the wide expanse of Mexico, encountering a gamut of dangers and a vast sea of impunity, and once they enter the United States, where as asylum seekers they are incarcerated under laws designed to impeded terrorism, or face new vulnerability to partners or strangers if they are undocumented. This reality is out of sync with the expectations generated by the multicultural reforms of the 1990s that recognized a range of rights for indigenous peoples, generating hope and unprecedented social mobilization for indigenous women seeking to fully access their human rights. The promises of neoliberal multiculturalism of the 1990s, however constrained, now seem a distant memory. Theorists have dedicated significant effort to understanding the limitations of neoliberal rights regimes for indigenous peoples, but today, the generalized irrelevance of those regimes suggests that we need to shift our lens. Based on migrant women’s oral histories, I explore how indigenous women are being interpellated by states and other social actors in ways that render even their most basic human rights unattainable. Further, I expand on that analysis to consider how state and quasi-state power is working in the current moment, which I argue is characterized not so much by neoliberal multiculturalism, as by neoliberal multicriminalism in which multiple regimes of illegality make indigenous futures increasingly complex.

Author

• Shannon Speed, University of Texas/Austin