This piece originally posted at The Nation, by Erin Corbett.
“Migrant Women Documenting Their Experiences Crossing the Border,” by Verónica Bayetti Flores. Feministing, June 12, 2014.
In this piece, Verónica discusses part of what’s missing from the discourse of crossing the border, and that’s the stories of women. Bayetti Flores points to the work of freelance photographer Encarni Pindado, known as MigraZoom, which provides disposable cameras to migrants so that they can document their own journeys. One of the themes from the women migrants’ photos, which Bayetti Flores focuses on, is sexual violence and strategies to avoid violence, but also “harm reduction practices such as taking contraceptives before crossing the border to avoid pregnancy should they get raped along the way.” What I found most important about this project is that it is a reminder that these individuals are people, often brutally dehumanized, who, as one immigrant womanexplains, “deserve respect…deserve a chance to work, and to live well and to study.”
Comments