Othering Spaces, Othering Bodies

This chapter argues that many borderland “Americans” use negative sexual stereotypes to suppress the dependence of white middle-class prosperity on the intimate presence of Mexicans. It suggests certain acceptable forms of contact coexist with polarizing domination and paranoia, leaving a conjunction of sexuality and economics untouched.

Advancing a historical analysis of race, immigration, and disability, Natalia Molina offers an examination of how public health and immigration discourses defined Mexican immigrants as culturally or physically unfit for citizenship.

Eithne Luibhéid’s “Looking Like a Lesbian” exemplifies how border crossings at US-Mexico ports of entry consolidate heteronormative identities. Using a Foucauldian framework, Luibhéid examines how notions of gender and sexuality came to shape both immigration policy and practices by officials of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Moreover she highlights the historical experiences of lesbians in order to disrupt the heteronormative logics and gendered expectations shaping these processes and state-sanctioned exclusion.