“He Has Me Tied with the Blessed and Damned Papers”: Undocumented-Immigrant Battered Women in Phoenix, Arizona

Undocumented-immigrant battered women in the borderlands have been pushed and pulled across the U.S.-Mexico border seeking socioeconomic advancement, maintenance of sociocultural ties, and physical security for themselves and their children. Legality and illegality play a central role in the lives of these women due to a combination of factors, such as how immigration policies linked to the needs of corporate capitalism have led to the creation of the “undocumented” population in the U.S. Southwest. Based on ethnographic research on battering among immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona, we bring a domestic violence perspective to immigration policy and an immigration perspective to domestic violence research to trace how battering contributes to illegality and how immigration policies contribute to men’s battering. We explore how border crossing and criminality can constitute survival as well as battering strategies and reflect on the place of kin and family in how immigrant women from Mexico struggle simultaneously around being “illegal” and battered. We conclude the analysis with a re?ection on the theoretical and policy implications of this study.