Feminist (Im)mobilities in Fortress(ing) North America: Rights, Citizenships, and Identities in Transnational Perspective

Since the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) tensions concerning immigration trends and policies, which continued to escalate at the turn of the millennium resulted in revised national security policies in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. These tensions have catalyzed the three governments to rethink their political and economic agendas. While national feminist scholarship in and on these respective countries continue to predominate, since NAFTA, there has been increasing feminist inquiry in a North American regional frame. Less has been done to understand challenges of the hegemonies of nation, region, and empire in this context and to adequately understand the meaning of (im)mobility in people's lives as well as the (im)mobilities of social theories and movements like feminism. Drawing from current feminist scholarship on intimacy and political economy and using three main frameworks: Fortressing Writs/Exclusionary Rights, Mobile Bodies/Immobile Citizenships, and Bordered/Borderland Identities, a handpicked group of established and rising feminist scholars methodically examine how the production of feminist knowledge has occurred in this region. The economic, racial, gender and sexual normativities that have emerged and/or been reconstituted in neoliberal and securitized North America further reveal the depth of regional and global restructuring.

Anne Sisson Runyan is Professor and former Head of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA, and was the lead director of the Women's Human Rights, Citizenships, and Identities in a North American Context exchange project. Amy Lind is the Mary Ellen Heintz Endowed Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. Marianne H. Marchand is Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science and Coordinator of the Canadian Studies Program at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla where she also founded the North American Studies graduate program. Patricia McDermott is Professor of Law and Society in the School of Social Sciences, former Acting Chair of the School of Women's Studies at York University, Canada.