Towards an Intersectional Analysis of Migration
Nancy Naples
University of Connecticut
Drawing on a long-term ethnographic investigation of the economic and social restructuring of two small towns, I demonstrate the value of an intersectional feminist materialist analysis to explore the incorporation of Mexican and Mexican American migrants in the rural Midwestern United States. I demonstrate that by uncovering how wider economic and political processes are manifested in everyday life, researchers can gain greater understanding of the contradictions of the state and the complex relationship between the state, market, other social institutions. In this presentation, I illustrate how an intersectional approach that bridges the scholarship on the political economy of immigration, racial formation, and materialist feminism provides a powerful framework through which to explore the social regulation of citizenship. Rather than locating an intersectional analysis in the embodied experiences of diverse social actors, I argue for an approach drawn from the different epistemological frames used to analyze class, race, and gender.