Moral A-Listers in a Moral Economy of Suspicion: Promoting Gender Projects, Re-establishing the Gender Order, and Forging Gendered Subjectivities on Online US Spousal Reunification Forums

Abstract

This study investigates how privileged petitioners applying for “green cards” for foreign national spouses uphold the US gender order and gender project when navigating the spousal reunification process. This work troubles the dichotomy within the literature between the all-empowered state and the wholly disempowered petitioners. Using content analysis of an online forum where petitioners exchange advice with others, I show the privileged petitioners enthusiastically engage in upholding the racialized gender hierarchy of the United States. Ultimately, as privileged petitioners broker immigration policy, they engage in state-building and nation-building practices that reaffirm their own privilege, which they feel is fleeting and must be re-established. Unlike less-privileged petitioners who discipline themselves to align with the state’s ideal of what a proper future nation should look like, these petitioners try to discipline others’ by constructing gendered subjectivities and forging racialized femininities that serve to uphold and legitimate the petitioners’ place in within the social hierarchy and the household.