Subject Area

Religion

Abstract

Before 2025, people who migrated to the United States were often classified according to ranked legitimacy standards. Legal immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers were viewed as ethically entering the U.S., whereas undocumented immigrants were not. Since 2025, people who were perceived—whether accurately or not—as unauthorized immigrants came under intensified public, political, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement scrutiny. Whether categorized as legal migrants, “bad hombres,” or as unwanted refugees, migrant bodies are interpreted through ethical lenses that have immediate consequences for their well-being, including exposure to extreme tactics deployed by immigration enforcement agencies such as surveillance, workplace raids, family separation, and prolonged detention. Women who migrate without proper documentation report acts of sexual violence and harassment at the hands of human traffickers, U.S. border agents, and immigration officials. This dissertation centers the lives of Spanish-speaking migrant women and the ethical negotiations they are forced to make amid complex and often violent migration systems to construct an ethic of migration. Violent migration systems signify the circumstances that force women to migrate, the impossible moral demands they encounter, and the personal and political environments that burden their agency.

The dissertation is based on a twenty-six-month emic ethnography that includes participant observation, individual interviews, and dialogic methods. Seventeen women who migrated from Mexico participated in the interviews and informed the analysis. The dissertation incorporated their testimonios, the Indigenous concept of buen vivir, the philosophical concept of burdened virtues, and the theological concept of faith to construct an ethic of migration that centers migrant women’s narratives of agency. Based on their testimonios, the dissertation advances precarious agency, the virtues of faith and coraje, and a vision of interconnected flourishing.  These reflect an ethic of buen vivir, defined as a flourishing-in-relationship among humans, the animals, and the environment. The dissertation asserts that migrant women persistently and collectively navigate complex migration systems in pursuit of the good life. It contends that an adequate ethical framework must recognize every person within a society—including those marked as unauthorized—as a moral contributor to that society’s flourishing. The dissertation gestures toward a migrant feminist ethic in which all members of a community participate in, and are responsible for, collective flourishing.

Degree Date

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Graduate Program in Religious Studies

Advisor

Rebekah L. Miles

Second Advisor

Jill DeTemple

Third Advisor

D. Stephen Long

Fourth Advisor

Neomi De Anda

Acknowledgements

My ama likes to tell people that I would wake up early with my cousins and wave them off to school when I was three, wishing I could go with them. I am thankful to my parents, Irma and Rigo, whose love and commitment to their faith and learning inspire my own. I am grateful to Dr. Rebekah Miles, who kindly took the time to introduce me to the program and the faculty during my first campus visit in 2016. Her close attention to detail, motivating quips, sincere understanding when things felt tough, and pursuit of clarity equipped me to navigate my own complexities in my life and work. Dr. Miles is my Doktormutter, but she has also become one of my spiritual tías whose faith, persistence, and wisdom I admire. Dr. Jill DeTemple has also provided professional and pedagogical mentorship. Her insights on the power of dialogic methods and moments inform my praxis. I have enjoyed learning from and being intellectually challenged by Dr. Steve Long over the years and am grateful for the public-facing scholarship that he has developed for these times. His questions inspired me to gain greater clarity about my ethical claims. I am grateful to Dr. Patrick Reyes for connecting me with Dr. Neomi De Anda. Early in my doctoral program, Dr. Reyes reminded me que sí se puede. I am thankful to Dr. De Anda’s joy and her work on chingona agency. Her insights on the history of Latina feminist and mujerista theologies shaped my work in this dissertation and as a scholar. Dr. Angela Tarango was my Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI) mentor and sage academic guide. As a first-generation doctoral student, I am thankful for Dr. Tarango’s timely advice. I started the Graduate Program in Religious Studies in the middle of the pandemic. I am thankful to Lauren Simms and her family for the hours-long pomodoro sessions and invitations to dinner, and to the members in my cohort and surrounding cohorts who engaged in lively discussion. The pandemic felt less isolating because of the friendships I made along the way. I am thankful to Shandon Klein, Mark Graffenreed, and Yolanda Santiago Correa, who regularly encouraged me to continue. Academia can be a confusing place, but peer friendships supported my journey. I appreciate the moments of conversation from GPRS colleagues, including Matthew Neumann, Danny Sebastian, Alex Vishio, Fernando Berwig, and Natalie Readnour. I am also thankful for my colleagues from other institutions, including Evelmyn Ivens, Eunice Villaneda-Bolaños, and Milly Silencio, who regularly encouraged me to keep writing. I am grateful to Dr. Roy Heller and Pamela Hogan, who always greeted me with a smile and took the time to answer my questions with care. Pamela, thank you for sharing in our hope. This dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support that I received over the last six years. The Southern Methodist University Mustang Fellowship supported my coursework and the year of my fieldwork. The Louisville Institute supported my first dissertation writing year. I was introduced to scholars in my field during the Louisville Institute writer’s week, who sharpened my exploration of the virtues. The HTI supported my doctoral career from my first year to my sixth and final year. I am thankful to Dr. Catherine Osbonre, who clarified my writing and helped me think through the chapter outlines. Dr. Osborne and my doctoral committee contributed to the clarity of this dissertation. Any remaining errors are my own. I am grateful for the strong encouragement that the HTI provided from Dr. Tarango’s mentorship to the HTI program and staff: Joanne Rodríguez, Suzette Aloyo, Ángela Schoepf, and Vanessa Ríos-Valentín, as well as their student leaders over the years. I wrote a large part of this dissertation in my parents’ backyard overlooking the trees and listening to the birds chirp and splash in the water alongside my pups. I am thankful for those moments. I am forever grateful to my family, who provided shelter, friendship, community, healing, encouragement, prayers, and laughter along the way. I am thankful for Pablo and Brooke, America and James, Judi and Pablo, Rigo and Chloe, and their families, who show me glimpses of the good life through their love and fellowship. Friendships across geographies are difficult to maintain, but I am so thankful for Debbie and Leon, Rene and Jen, Jennifer and Jonathan, and Jennifer and Patrick for checking in with me when I retreated into writing mode. I am grateful for my fierce hermanas in leadership: Elizabeth, Stacy, and Victoria, for always reminding me of our collective strength. I am encouraged by Addie, Angela, Ariana, Felicia, and Mattie, and the work that they contribute to the flourishing of their communities. I met Juan at just the right time for the right season. I am thankful for him, his insights, laughter, and care for his plants. When I think about this dissertation, I think of the “great cloud of witnesses” who have prayed and cheered me on and are no longer on earthside: tía Ali, I felt your laughter and love for the healing plants as I wrote the last chapter; my tíos, tías, abuelitos, and abuelitas whose lives of migration, survival, and faith inspire my work.

Number of Pages

343

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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