ABSTRACT
Migrants and deportees produce and embody migrant knowledge. As Robert McKee Irwin argues, “migrant thinking” can lead to new ways of thinking and being. This chapter presents the results of a qualitative study on deported mothers, thanks to their digital storytelling deposited in the Humanizing Deportation archive. The manuscript describes the experiences and emotions of ten women. Also, it analyzes the role of domestic violence in their motherhood and their processes of reinsertion in their new life in Mexico. The first part of this chapter describes the physical and psychological domestic violence they suffered in their US homes and, later, in Mexico. The second part focuses on these deported mothers' acts of resistance and agency. From Scott's “hidden transcripts” approach, some strategies have allowed their survival. Listening carefully to these stories as part of an archive of feelings and knowledge of the migrants invites us to understand their embodied experiences of motherhood in that context and how they deal with violence.
