Fragile Belonging: Motherhood and Migration in a Sanctuary City

Abstract

A substantial body of research documents the gendered and racialized inequalities produced by U.S. immigration policies, inequalities that specifically cause harm to Latina immigrants as they strive for more secure futures for themselves and their families. Yet it remains unclear how welcoming locales may attenuate the harsh impact of exclusionary federal immigration policies. In this dissertation, I interrogate how a welcoming sanctuary city and its schools, in contrast to anti-immigrant policies and discourses at the national level, affect immigrant women’s sense of home and belonging. My ethnographic study, set in Somerville, Massachusetts, draws on three years of participant-observation, as well as over 100 in-depth interviews with immigrant mothers, local educators, and community leaders. Through this research, I examine how immigration status, gendered expectations about caregiving, and socio-political geographies shape Latina immigrant mothers’ perspectives and decisions about family, education, work, and community. My findings reveal how the symbolic welcome espoused by the city and its schools, as well as protective sanctuary policies and practices, help Latina immigrant mothers establish roots in their communities. This explicit welcome, in combination with the legal opening of Plyler v. Doe, which allows all children to attend K-12 schools regardless of immigration status, renders schools as sources of support for immigrant women, especially as the pandemic unraveled social norms and routines. I demonstrate how one primary mechanism for belonging comes through the gendered labor of school district employees such as family liaisons, parent leaders, and enrollment specialists, whom I term “street-level caregivers,” expanding conceptualizations of institutional actors’ impact on immigrant families. Yet these experiences of welcome and inclusion, in the city and in the schools, are full of contradictions, and by documenting how women respond to ruptures in belonging, I contribute new understandings about gendered forms of civic engagement that are not reliant on formal citizenship for legitimacy or efficacy. Finally, I show how even supportive schools and abundant emergency resources, particularly during the pandemic, are inadequate in light of rapid gentrification and sky-rocketing housing costs. I argue that within this welcoming but gentrified city – one where schools provide material support for immigrant women to meet gendered expectations about motherhood – housing costs become an equally powerful barrier to belonging as lack of secure immigration status. As a whole, my dissertation illuminates the gendered impacts of sanctuary policies and practices, the strain of gentrification on immigrant families, and Latina immigrant mothers’ creative resilience as they nurture the roots they hope will anchor their children’s futures.