Creating home, claiming place: Latina immigrant mothers and the production of belonging

This comparative analysis of Latina immigrant mothers’ experiences in “Squire Town,” a farmworker community in Northern California, and Williamsburg, a recent Latina/o destination in Eastern Virginia, employs a gender lens to analyze how these women make claims to place, belonging, and inclusion through their sustained individual and collective struggles to ensure the well-being of their families. In Williamsburg they created attachment to place through resilience in facing restricted access to services and housing and overcoming fear to navigate unfamiliar physical and institutional settings. Mothers in Squire Town made politicized claims to inclusion by advocating for services in their community. Women in both sites developed support networks to assist them in obtaining or collectively demanding resources and services for their families. These mothers’ responses to exclusionary conditions in these two contexts reveal gendered, place-specific dimensions of belonging and women’s contribution to its production.