UCLA

My dissertation, “‘We Have Rights to Nothing.’Central American Mothers Seek Asylum in the U.S. and Expel to Mexico” draws on 14 months of participant observation and 125 interviews with mothers from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador living in Tijuana, Mexico. It investigates how restrictive immigration policies—especially third-country enforcement mechanisms—impact the rights, relationships, and everyday survival strategies of asylum-seeking mothers. Structured as a series of interrelated articles, this research examines how asylum-seeking Central American mothers navigate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program and the broader asylum process. I explore three core strands: 1) how they strategize survival amid multiple, intensifying, simultaneous, and stacked uncertainties; 2) how intersecting social identities (race, gender, motherhood) shape the consequences they face in their pursuit of legal recognition; and 3) how immigration policies and laws deeply affect the most intimate aspects of migrants’ lives and social ties. Chapter One of my dissertation grounds the study in the history of Central American migration and the legal-political context of Tijuana. I outline the research goals, review the literature on immigrant racialization, motherhood, and gender policy exclusion, and provide background on metering, MPP, and the asylum process. I also introduce the methodology and preview the three main chapters. This chapter calls for greater scholarly attention to the detention, expulsion, and marginalization of asylum-seeking mothers. Chapter Two introduces the concept of compounded liminality, the sociolegal, temporal, and geographic dislocation experienced by mothers expelled to Mexico. I examine how they make short- and long-term decisions about their lives under policies that produce layered, harmful uncertainties. These conditions shape how mothers access asylum rights and plan their futures. Chapter Three analyzes how Central American mothers navigate the U.S. legal system while stuck in a third country. I center race, gender, and motherhood in theorizing immigration administrative burdens, highlighting not only psychological and procedural barriers, but also the physical harms mothers endure. I contribute two key insights: first, that gender and motherhood—alongside race—shape experiences of bureaucratic violence; and the second, that MPP imposes physical costs on women seeking asylum. Chapter Four focuses on social ties. I explore how mothers relate to fellow migrants—both co-nationals and others—and how the law mediates these relationships. Living in a place that was never meant to be a destination, mothers recalibrate trust, connection, and the long-term viability of their relationships in a hostile legal and social environment. Chapter Five offers a synthesis and a broader reflection. I highlight the implications of third-country deterrence policies and call for further research on their transnational effects. I argue that the lived experiences of asylum-seeking mothers at the U.S.-Mexico border are emblematic of a global pattern: wealthier nations outsourcing border enforcement while exporting the human cost of exclusion. Understanding these policies from the ground up is crucial to exposing their toll on families, communities, and the people who advocate for them.