Remaking Citizenship Latina Immigrants and Ne American Politics [Hardcover]

Standing at the intersection of immigration and welfare reform, immigrant Latin American women are the target of special scrutiny in the United States. Both the state and the media often present them as scheming welfare queens or long-suffering, silent victims of globalization and machismo. This book argues for a reformulation of our definitions of citizenship and politics, one inspired by women who are usually perceived as excluded from both.Weaving the stories of Mexican and Central American women with history and analysis of the anti-immigrant upsurge in 1990s California, this compelling book examines the impact of reform legislation on individual women's lives and their engagement in grassroots political organizing. Their accounts of personal and political transformation offer a new vision of politics rooted in concerns as disparate as domestic violence, childrearing, women's self-esteem, and immigrant and workers' rights.Remaking Citizenshipexplores the stories of low-income Latinas actively engaged in a new vision of feminist politics rooted in concerns as disparate as domestic violence, childrearing, women's self-esteem, and immigrant and workers' rights. Coll's ethnographic study illuminates the myriad ways that immigrant women are enacting new forms of citizenship in their own image and on their own terms . . . The strength ofRemaking Citizenshipis that Coll does not succumb to a linear narrative of women's self-empowerment, but remains attentive to the gaps and contradictions in Latina citizenship discourses. [Coll's] nuanced approach to citizenship is one of the book's strengths. The varied and complex practices of citizenship Coll discusses expand normative ideas about citizenship as a formal status. . . A final strength of the book is the richness of the ethnographic data and the author's reflective voice. This makes it an important read for students and scholars of citizenship studies, Latina/o and Chicana/o studies. Kathleen Coll is alC&