Colonization, migration, and right-wing extremism: The constitution of embodied life of a dispossessed undocumented immigrant woman

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to illuminate the lived experiences of Victoria—an undocumented immigrant woman of Mexican origin working and living in the United States. Drawing on an in-depth interview conducted with Victoria following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, we identify a set of discursive and material conditions that inform her lived reality. By examining three mutually constituting stages of Victoria’s life, we invite readers to consider how the imbricated nexus between global manifestations of colonization, migration, and the political rise of right-wing extremism is embodied and negotiated locally by one particular woman. To aid in theoretically informing the excerpts provided by Victoria, we draw on Judith Butler’s recent works in which she develops, individually and collaboratively, ideas of dispossession and precariousness. We find that dispossession and precariousness foreground the currents of vulnerability that are located palpably in Victoria’s narrative. Finally, by engaging with a genre of feminine writing that collapses the traditional boundaries between theory and practice, we revisit the question of praxis in relation to the researchers’ responsibility toward the participants of their study.

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“…There is a central problem with the approach adopted by the Indian government in an effort to contain COVID-19. Social distancing measures introduced in India did not adequately account for the difficulty under which the most socially and economically vulnerable individuals live (Fotaki & Prasad, 2015;Segarra & Prasad, 2020). The issuance of nation-wide lockdown by the Indian Government did not come with concomitant resources that would allow for the most vulnerable to follow the social distancing measures being arranged.…”

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