June 2024
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Conflict and Society
How do Mexican-American women in the US-Mexico borderlands respond to insecurity relating to multiple forms of discrimination? The present article compares the experiences of women of different class and ethnic backgrounds to analyze their gendered watchfulness in response to the racialized and classed anti-immigrant vigilance of privileged Anglo-Americans. We argue that, in a context of ongoing coloniality, maintaining an exploitable racialized and gendered sub-worker class requires conjuring the illusion of the border as a necessary security feature. Mexican-American women's watchfulness strategies, including professionalism, beauty practices, and artistic performances, instead makes visible the ways in which the border as the margin of the state actively produces insecurity and violence. Viewing security from the margins of the margins allows us to expand and decolonize previous understandings.