Illegality, motherhood, and place: Undocumented Latinas making meaning and negotiating daily life

Federal immigration policies powerfully shape immigrants' and their families' lives, but the consequences are uneven across place. Taking seriously the notion of place as socially constructed, this article draws from two qualitative studies, one in the new rural immigrant destination of Southwest, Montana, and the other in the traditional urban destination of Los Angeles, California, to examine how undocumented immigrants navigate daily life in the US. In the face of legal violence and place-specific forms of exploitation, mothers exert strained forms of agency through access to or creative redefinitions of local work, social services, and networks. They make meaning of place as best as they can through the lens of motherhood, regardless of how they achieve financial or emotional stability for their children. The analysis reveals that illegality intersects with dynamic characteristics of place to produce varying experiences of exploitation and constrained agency centered often on motherhood.