The Lives of Black and Latina Immigrant Women

Introduction

Although immigrant men and women often view their lives in America through the lens of ethnic particularism recalling, for example, neighborhoods and even entire lives peopled only by those of their own background we know that the common ground of American life inevitably brought immigrants of many cultures into contact with each other and with the native-born. In workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, marketplaces, public institutions, and even homes and families, women of many backgrounds shared common experiences. (Sánchez, 30-44) Thus, while most of the chapters in this volume focus on the women of one particular background, the goal of the anthology is to raise questions for comparison and synthesis. Studies of black women immigrants in the 1870s may shed light on or raise questions about the lives of Cuban women in the 1980s.

Overview

Professor Kelley in the current research has discussed the lives of black and Latina immigrant women in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, in Domestica, the author has opted to focus her research on immigrant domestic workers, particularly Mexican and Central American women in Los Angeles. (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 7-15) To understand why scholars so rarely found common ground in the study of immigrant women, it is helpful to understand how the interests of immigration/ethnic studies and women's studies scholars have diverged over the past two decades. Each of these fields could logically claim immigrant women as a central focus, yet neither ultimately did so. Instead, as a group of Afro-American women early pointed out, in most research, all the blacks are men; all the women are white. Those who belonged in both categories disappeared from view, as they "fell between the cracks" separating distinct new scholarly discourses.

Despite their shared origins in the political struggles of the 1960s, ethnic and black women's studies' diverging concerns are quite striking. (Sánchez, 30-44) In the wake of the U.S. ethnic revival of the 1960s and 1970s and the rise of immigration levels after 1965, the study of ethnicity in the United States has generally focused on the rich and unique characteristics and histories of particular immigrant and ethnic groups. Older views of inevitable assimilation and the diminishing influence of ethnicity were discarded and replaced with a new respect for the persistence of cultural diversity and a pluralistic understanding of American society. Family economies, family ties, and ethnic communities were often seen as the source of ethnic persistence and solidarity, which in turn were viewed as healthy oppositional strategies for coping with discrimination and marginality. Needless to say, scholars in ethnic and immigration studies assumed that men and women shared these ethnic cultures, were shaped positively by them, and benefited from their oppositional character. In history, male and female differences were often ignored (although, as Sánchez argues the study on immigration history, only women's lives were actually studied). (Sánchez, 30-44) Or as was initially true in sociology and anthropology, according to Kelly and Hondagneu-Sotelo the separate study of women migrants was dismissed as reductionist.

During these same years, scholars in women's studies ...