“Race,” Space, and Power: The Survival Strategies of Working Poor Women

Abstract Feminist geographers have documented that the spatial entrapment of many women negatively affects their economic opportunities. The experiences of many African-American women, however, suggest that the spatial-entrapment thesis requires refinement. I argue that the spatial-entrapment thesis is based on a problematic conceptualization of the links between space and power in people's daily lives, one that equates immobility with powerlessness and mobility with power. The thesis not only theorizes power as unidirectional (i.e., more power, more mobility), it also masks important differences among women by undertheorizing mobility and immobility relative to social relations other than gender, such as "race." I argue that, depending on the constellation of power relations, the spatial boundedness of women's lives is a potential resource for, as well as a constraint on, their economic security. The utility of this reconceptualization of the links between space and power for examining the opportunities for and barriers to women's economic security is demonstrated through an analysis of the role of place-based personal networks in the survival strategies of working poor African-American and white women with children in Worcester, Massachusetts. I first evaluate these women's experiences in terms of the spatial-entrapment thesis. Then I examine whether women's use of spatial rootedness in the construction of their survival strategies can be enabling as well as constraining. The results confirm that the spatial boundedness of women's daily lives and their survival strategies are mutually constituted; that is, place-based personal networks are an important component of survival strategies, and can be both enabling and constraining, depending on how racism structures women's experiences. Keywords:: Spatial entrapment of womensurvivalstrategiessocial networksracismgenderworking poor women