Qualitative study reveals structural violence and resilience mechanisms in migrating Latin American women, highlighting the need for comprehensive humanitarian protections.
Migration is a global phenomenon in which migrant women constitute a particularly vulnerable group: in addition to facing challenges common to the migrant population, such as poverty, labor exploitation, lack of access to basic services, xenophobia, cultural barriers, kidnapping, and human trafficking, they also face systematic attitudes of contempt, devaluation, and gender-based violence. Consequently, when women migrate, they embody the face of resistance because, bearing the weight of uprooting, which places them between strength and vulnerability, they deploy strategies of care, solidarity, sisterhood, and hope that drive them not to let themselves be defeated. This is shown here through the experiences of Latin American women who, alone or with their children, were interviewed in shelters in Mexico City and Tijuana during their transit through Mexico toward the United States. Their stories, which reveal both the structural violence they endure and the inner strength that sustains them on their journey, invite us to rethink categories such as exodus, hospitality, and justice, while, in the face of social indifference, they challenge us to open up horizons of justice and comprehensive care for them and their families.
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Villeda et al. (2026) studied this question.
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