ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the gendered dynamics of displacement and resistance in the context of the unfolding humanitarian migrant crisis in Central America and Mexico. Feminist vulnerability theorizing provides a framework through which to critique the relations of power that differentially expose particular populations to harm. The chapter explores how the extreme precarity experienced among Central American migrants in transit through Mexico arises from both structural and discursive relations of power, and how these experiences of precarity are further structured by gender, race, and nationality. The dehumanization of migrant populations can be seen in the normalization of the untold number of migrant deaths and disappearances that occur each year at the US-Mexico border and throughout the migrant route in Mexico. Women in a variety of contexts globally have used public mourning to make visible the forms of injustice and violence that have been visited upon themselves, their families, and their communities.
