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Writing the Next Chapter in Women's Education: The Compelling Imperatives Protecting Women's Rights at the Border through Advocacy and Education
Writing the Next Chapter in Women’s Education: The Compelling Imperatives
Often quoted but seldom cited, French journalist Alphonse Karr once wrote, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” His perennially valid observation takes on new significance in the context of the lives of women and girls around the globe. In classroom and legislature, in corporate boardroom and non-governmental organization, we talk about globalization: its effects on the economy, on politics, on security, on education. Global connectivity, or at least the ever-increasing awareness of our interconnected relationships, seems to have transformed every aspect of society. Yet if we examine women’s lives and women’s leadership throughout the world, globalization seems in some ways to have rendered little change at all. Although women’s lives, particularly in industrialized nations, have changed dramatically, women throughout the world face continued inequity--and colleges and universities face the continued and increasingly complex challenge of preparing women for leadership and advocacy. When members of the Women’s College Coalition and guests from women’s colleges around the world met in Washington, DC, this past October, their conversations focused on precisely this challenge. The need to educate women for leadership and advocacy in the complex global world of the twenty-first century is acute. Colleges and universities, and women’s colleges in particular, must take leadership in accomplishing this task. Rapid Change, Continued Inequity: Literacy, Economics, and Politics The coalition gathering in Washington formed a diverse international group. Representatives from women’s colleges traveled from many distant places to participate in the conversation: attendees came from as far away as Bangladesh, India, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines. We came together to reflect on the challenges at hand and to discuss the next steps for women’s education. Our conversation was guided by the reflections of our three panelists: Linda Basch, president of the National Council of Research on Women; Meredith Reid Sarkees, president of the Global Women’s Leadership in International Security; and Cecilia Conrad, dean of the faculty at Scripps College and president-elect of the International Association for Feminist Economists. Mary Brown Bullock, president emerita of Agnes Scott College, moderated the panel discussion and framed the conversation by encouraging us to see global issues as women’s issues and global challenges at the center of the work of today’s women’s colleges. The challenges we face are indeed daunting. Linda Basch cited findings from the Council’s 2006 publication Gains and Gaps: A Look at the World’s Women to remind us of specific inequities that continue to affect women--inequities that might be alleviated through women’s education. Violence against women is only one area Basch cited where statistics continue to show deep distress but education “makes a difference.” Around the globe, one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Yet research in India finds that educated women, who are more skilled in avoiding and resisting violence, are less likely to experience it. Despite the importance of education in alleviating this and other problems, too many women remain uneducated. Basch noted that more than 18 percent of the adult population (or 800 million people worldwide) is illiterate--and 64 percent of illiterate adults are women. Literacy rates for girls have improved over the past three decades, from 55 percent in 1970 to 74 percent in 2000. Yet in 2000, girls still represented 57 percent of school-aged children worldwide who were not in school. As Basch reminded us, “The education of women and girls…[is] a driver of economic growth, productivity, and poverty reduction. Women with some degree of education are found to be more likely to invest in the health, education, and well-being of their families.” Thus women’s education results in a range of benefits: better nutrition for the whole family, better health care, better health and survival rates for both boys and girls, lower birth rates, poverty reduction, earlier and longer schooling for children, and better overall economic performance. Yet around the globe, women’s education remains inadequate. Women’s economic empowerment is unsatisfactory, too. Cecilia Conrad noted that wealth differences around the world manifest in various forms, from earnings to land ownership, and that these differences often translate into disadvantages for women. Even in the United States, men receive a disproportionate share of economic awards: women earn 77 cents to the dollar of what men earn. Conrad described women’s work as an engine of economic growth and development whose products do not always benefit women themselves. “Many [investors and workers] take advantage of new world opportunities [carried] on the backs of women, who face few alternatives for better employment [and] restrictions that limit their opportunities to bargain for higher wages,” said Conrad. Indeed, about 60 percent of the world’s informal workers (including domestic and childcare providers in the United States) are women, and these women often lack legal protection. According to Conrad, the global feminization of HIV/AIDS applies not just to the infections themselves (women account for nearly half of all cases), but to women’s workloads as well (women and girls provide up to 90 percent of HIV/AIDS care in the home, correlating to a one-third increase in workload). Women are disadvantaged in terms of economic leadership as well: as Conrad noted, women hold only 2 percent of U.S. CEO positions and 14.7 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies. With such meager representation, their ability to effect change within these institutions is limited. Greater economic access corresponds to greater agency. Isobel Coleman of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in Foreign Affairs that women who are economically engaged become more involved in family decision-making and “participate more in public affairs and community life” (2004). But as Meredith Reid Sarkees reminded us, economic engagement alone is not the bridge across the public participation gap. In the United States, for instance, where women’s economic engagement and literacy is relatively high, women’s political participation (at least in terms of elected office) is middling at best. On the national level, women’s participation has increased, but the overall numbers are small. In 1979 women held only 3 percent of seats in Congress. This figure increased to 10 percent in 1993, but has grown very slowly, peaking at only 16.3 percent in 2007. Today the United States ranks 67th out of 134 countries in terms of women in the legislature; this is a decline from a ranking of 41st in 1997. And the United States has had no female chief of state. Thus by a multitude of indicators--educational, economic, and political--women have not reached equity, either in the United States or in our sister countries around the globe. The specific inequities are constantly shifting. Alluding to Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, Cecilia Conrad reminded us that, indeed, the world is not flat. Its distribution of resources has peaks and valleys, and they comprise a constantly shifting landscape. The nature of global competition has changed and is always changing, creating gaps in newly challenging ways. The knowledge, habits, processes, and skills necessary to compete in the global economy change constantly and at an ever increasing pace. As educators, we must prepare women to traverse this fluid landscape. Educating for Leadership: The Need for Political Participation
In planning our plenary panel discussion, Carol Ann Mooney, president of Saint Mary’s College, drew inspiration from the work of Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Lamont University Professor at Harvard University, and Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School. Sen and Nussbaum have pioneered the capability approach for evaluating human well-being and development. Traditional measures of a nation’s economic development status include quantitative indicators such as gross national product per capita. In contrast, the capability approach takes into account a distribution of indicators, including education and health care, which are central to the potential for full and flourishing human lives. In reflecting on the capability approach, Sen has said, “[E]ducation in general and women's education in particular can, working with other changes, make a critical difference. Indeed, a great many empirical studies…have brought out the crucial role of basic education for all--and of women's education in particular--in facilitating radical social and economic changes that are so badly needed in our problem-ridden world” (2004). Our conversations reaffirmed the significance of women’s education in changing personal circumstances for individual women throughout the world. But as the meeting participants discussed the evident need for women’s education, we had to ask ourselves: for what are we educating the women who attend our colleges and universities? We have established that education improves the lives of individual women and their families--but education must serve some greater collective goal. Women must be prepared to lead the way, not only in their private lives but also through public participation. Meredith Reid Sarkees cited several global and local forces described in Gains and Gaps that have combined to thwart women’s and girls’ advancement both globally and in the United States: the predominance of neo-liberal economics, the rise of fundamentalist ideologies and conservative governments, and the intensification of militarism over the past decade. To these she added a fourth: the failure of political leadership. “In addition to having a culture that sends very mixed messages about suitable roles for women,” said Sarkees, “we have failed to develop a critical mass of political leaders who are seriously committed to promoting women’s rights.” For Sarkees, the compelling imperative of our meeting appeared at the intersection of two questions: “Women’s leadership for what?” and “Women’s leadership for whom?” Her co-panelists seemed to agree that leadership was at the crux of the challenge facing women’s education in the twenty-first century. They collectively stressed the imperative to educate all women around the globe, and to educate them for leadership by inculcating the kinds of competencies that are essential in today’s world: multicultural fluency, problem-solving skills, and economic literacy, to name only a few. In attaining these skills, women would prepare themselves for more fulfilling careers and personal lives, as well as for leadership and advocacy on behalf of other women who share in their local and global communities. If we are to prepare women for leadership, what would that leadership look like? Sarkees gave us a hint. Drawing a parallel between the distinctions that both Amartya Sen and Michael Beschloss (author of Presidential Courage) have made in describing types of leaders, Sarkees spoke of the power of transformational leadership. While transactional leaders create clear structures in which people are motivated through individual rewards and punishments, transformational leaders follow their vision to fundamentally change the status quo. As Sarkees said, “If we want to have a society in which there is equity for women, then we have to nurture and support transformational leaders who have both a vision of a better world for women and who are willing to take actions and risks to benefit others.” And where would that leadership be located? Swanee Hunt, Director of the Women and Policy Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, wrote in Foreign Affairs, “[W]here women have taken leadership roles, it has been as social reformers and entrepreneurs, not as politicians or government officials….The world, however, needs [women] to take that experience into the political sphere….[Women] come to the table with a different perspective on conflict resolution. Women are more likely to adopt a broad definition of security that includes key social and economic issues that would otherwise be ignored, such as safe food and clean water and protection from gender-based violence” (2007). Their leadership in public affairs would be transformative indeed. When John Roberts filled the United States Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Anna Quindlen commented: “There is now only a single woman on the Supreme Court. Imagine the world if homes, businesses, schools, had only one woman for every eight men. It would be an odd sort of world, wouldn’t it?” (2006). One might, of course, imagine an inverse corollary: a world where women’s political leadership matched their numbers in society. Colleges and universities, both in the United States and abroad, play a key role in envisioning and creating that world. Inventing a New Plan: the Opportunity for Women’s Colleges The challenge to prepare women for leadership extends to all educators of women, in primary through post-secondary schools, in the United States and around the globe. Meredith Reid Sarkees paraphrased Ernest Boyer’s observation that “[E]ducation in its fullest sense is inescapably a moral enterprise. It is not the cultivation of skills or the learning of certain branches of knowledge, but a continuous and conscious effort to guide students to know and pursue what is good and worthwhile.” But as Sarkees indicated, women’s colleges are uniquely situated to develop a model of women’s activism and transformational leadership that would benefit women and society worldwide. Women’s colleges have always emphasized the importance of women’s agency, the value of women’s equity, and the critical goal of improving women’s status--concerns that will serve us well in the new global century. The opportunity before us, said Basch, is to channel the force of women’s colleges to redirect globalizing processes. But as she reminded us, women’s colleges can’t do it alone. “We need to work in partnership with other women--with women’s colleges in other countries, with women in the business sector, and with women’s advocacy groups. And we need to find ways to partner with men, and bring them into efforts to shape and implement a transformative agenda for change.” Basch quoted Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Claudia Kennedy, “Women not only see things differently from men; they see different things.” In seeing different things, they strengthen the organizations they lead and in which they participate. Cecilia Conrad paraphrased Kennedy: “Women’s colleges not only see things differently, but they see different things.” Conrad urged women’s colleges to act globally, to be advocates for girls’ and women’s education, and to prepare women to be competitors in the global economy. In sum, she envisioned women’s colleges as global advocates for human kind, using the dual lenses of women’s issues and globalization to renew the case for liberal education. Fulfilling this imperative will indeed be a challenge. Most women’s colleges in the United States were founded at a time when educational opportunities for women were severely limited. As women’s opportunities have expanded, so too has the work of women’s colleges, moving to fill the new gaps created as the landscape of higher education shifts. As we reinterpret the founding missions of established institutions for the contemporary world, and as new women’s colleges emerge in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe, where opportunities for women’s higher education have been severely limited, women’s colleges continue to meet the ever-changing educational needs of increasingly diverse populations of women in the twenty-first century. Yet as Alphonse Karr said, the more things change, the more they remain the same: the education and advancement of women across all racial, ethnic, age, socioeconomic and religious lines is what Joanne Creighton, president of Mount Holyoke College, has described as the unfinished agenda of the twenty-first century. The Women’s College Coalition, together with its sister women’s colleges and other advocates around the world, is responding to the clarion call sounded at our annual meeting. We are writing the next chapter in women’s education--expanding the scope of research, information, and knowledge sharing to develop sustainable cross-border contacts and multicultural educational endeavors. With new partnerships and new technologies, we are advancing curriculum development, collaborations, and student, faculty, and staff exchanges. We invite others to join us in turning the page into the next chapter. For more information about the Women’s College Coalition and its work educating women for leadership and advocacy in the twenty-first century, contact Susan Lennon at susan.lennon@womenscolleges.org or visit www.womenscolleges.org. References Boyer, E. 1998. College: The undergraduate experience in America. New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Coleman, I. 2004. The payoff from women’s rights. Foreign Affairs (May/June): 80. Hunt, S. 2007. Let women rule. Foreign Affairs (May/June): 109. Quindlen, A. 2006. Remembrance of things past. Newsweek (March 6). Sen, A. 2004. What’s the point of women’s education? Paper presented at the meeting of Women’s Education Worldwide, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. Protecting Women’s Rights at the Border through Advocacy and Education The maxim “think globally, act locally” is particularly easy to practice at international borders, where local issues are inherently global and the effects of worldwide migration are apparent in acutely immediate ways. When I joined the Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW) just over a year ago, I sought out initiatives at the heart of this convergence--those that would address the local impacts of globalization on underserved women living in Southern Arizona. My background as an attorney representing immigrants and low-income workers led me toward programs that would alleviate the negative effects of U.S. immigration and border policies on women immigrants’ rights. As a member of SIROW, the research arm of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Arizona, I have had the opportunity to develop projects that harness the University’s research and education capabilities to improve conditions for immigrant women, while at the same time providing students with a unique education in globalization. Women immigrants in the border region are caught in the crossfire of U.S. immigration policies and the forces of global economic and political development. Their numbers have surged over the past decade as more women cross the border to search for better wages, locate family members, or escape from violence. Women migrants undertake a treacherous journey north complicated by increased enforcement of U.S. immigration policies at the border. Some women do not survive the journey. Many experience sexual violence along the way, and some are apprehended at the border and placed in detention facilities. Those who do reach their destinations face a harsh reality. Federal and state policies currently place little emphasis on the enforcement of labor laws and significant emphasis on high-profile enforcement of immigration laws. This leaves women immigrants in the labor force particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. They fear that in speaking out about mistreatment, they will draw attention to themselves and risk deportation. The project I direct, Protecting Women’s Rights at the Border, responds to this dire situation with a unique combination of education, outreach, legal services, and research. Like all of SIROW’s projects, it applies a “participatory research-action” model, in which research participants play an active role in developing and implementing projects rather than acting as passive subjects. I find this approach especially well-suited for academic research on globalization, which occurs at the crux of several deeply inequitable relationships: between the United States and Mexico, between the university and its surrounding communities, and in this case, between women migrants and the larger global economic and political forces that shape their lives. To avoid replicating unequal power dynamics, we have structured the project to encourage participants to actively shape its goals and contours. From an educational perspective, our approach also permits the students involved to move beyond abstract discussions of globalization and confront specific individual lives impacted by global trends. In its pilot year, “Protecting Women’s Rights at the Border” has launched two initiatives: the Tucson Women Workers’ Project and the Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities. Together, they represent a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, and inter-institutional approach to addressing the complex local-level effects of globalization on women’s lives. The Tucson Women Workers’ Project The Tucson Women Workers’ Project provides low-wage women workers with legal information, advice, and counseling about their employment rights. It also offers outreach, education, research, and advocacy in order to improve working conditions in occupations where low-wage women workers, particularly immigrant women, predominate. The project serves all low-wage women workers, immigrants and citizens alike. But it particularly targets its outreach to domestic workers and child- and elder-care providers, who are predominantly immigrant women. Because women in these occupations typically work outside public view, they are especially susceptible to unsafe working conditions and violations of basic wage and hour protections. Many of these women speak only Spanish or have limited English proficiency. Some do not have lawful immigration status, which makes them all the more vulnerable to exploitation. The Women Workers’ Project aims to address the complex needs of women immigrant workers by bringing together the strengths of various institutions and individuals: the resources and research capabilities of the University of Arizona, the community organizing and advocacy expertise of my nonprofit partner on the project, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and the energy and initiative of the students and women participants. A weekly walk-in labor rights clinic forms the core of the project. Every Wednesday evening at one of SIROW’s community offices, students from the University of Arizona’s law school and a rotating group of volunteer attorneys provide confidential legal advice and counseling to women workers about their rights in the workplace. Students and community members also provide free on-site childcare. SIROW trains all clinic staff to respond to questions about employment matters, including wage and hour violations, race and sex discrimination, sexual harassment, unemployment benefits, and workers’ compensation. In some cases, staff members provide women with ongoing support and assistance in resolving workplace disputes outside clinic hours. In other cases, they refer women to a network of local attorneys and organizations that can provide further assistance. As the project aims to address the challenges faced by women immigrant workers on a systemic as well as an individual level, the clinics serve an additional function beyond providing women with individualized advice. The clinics are also an entry point into a variety of training and educational opportunities that introduce women to basic employment law concepts and develop their advocacy skills. The project offers workshops that teach women about minimum wage and overtime laws, negotiation skills, and legally required accommodations for workers who are experiencing domestic violence at home. These workshops encourage women to assert a measure of control over their work arrangements and thereby prevent some of the abusive situations that originally brought them to the clinic. We hope that women can employ this training to collectively reshape some of the systemic inequities that have disenfranchised them. We also actively encourage women interested in leadership to become involved in shaping the activities and goals of the Women Workers’ Project. By enrolling in a series of training sessions, women can become “outreach coordinators” who lead know-your-rights presentations for small groups of women workers in their own communities. They can also join a growing group of women in the community who meet regularly with SIROW and AFSC staff and law students to discuss the project’s plans and priorities. The labor rights clinic additionally serves systemic goals by collecting data on trends and recurring problems facing immigrant women workers. Before discussing an individual’s specific employment question at the clinic, a law student guides her through an intake form with a series of questions about the conditions of her employment. This information forms the basis for reports and advocacy campaigns that aim to raise public awareness about the working conditions of low-wage immigrant women workers and highlight needed policy reforms. Finally, the Women Workers’ Project provides a valuable educational experience for law student participants. The legal concepts and skills that students learn in the classroom gain an important additional layer of meaning when applied to the challenges working immigrant women face. One student shared the following reflections in a journal about her experience with the clinic: "[Over the course of the semester], [w]omen came to us with a variety of problems and workplace issues, but what came through to me most strongly was that women’s issues cross class, racial, ethnic, and citizenship boundaries. This is not news, but sometimes I think we forget the truth of the universality of the female experience. On one of my last evenings at the clinic, a woman walked in with our Legal Clinic flyer in her hands, with her children, and told me her story. Her story, sometimes tearful, sometimes funny, often complicated, was filled with struggle and hard work and pride. Was she a citizen? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. But what touched me most was her clutching our flyer as she talked, as if we represented her one tie to the law that she hoped would help. I have faith that it can, because her being in this country means that the law belongs to her, no questions asked." We hope that experiences like the one this student recounts can inform future careers, regardless of whether students pursue specialties related to immigration or employment law. By working at the clinics, students gain a deeper understanding of how laws and policies influence marginalized communities and begin to see the law as part of a holistic array of approaches to addressing the needs of vulnerable populations. In time, we hope to expand the educational opportunities presented by the Women Workers’ Project to students in other parts of the university in addition to the law school. We are already exploring ways to involve undergraduates in providing child care for the clinic, as well as in many of the project’s community education and outreach activities. Spanish-speaking students at both the undergraduate and graduate level, for example, might receive credit for serving as translators at the clinic in workshops and at other events. Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities Although federal immigration policy reform has made headlines over the past year, the critical role of immigration detention facilities has received little public notice and even less academic attention. Very limited information is available about the 28,000 people in immigration detention on any given day (Torres 2007), including 2,500 in Arizona, of which approximately 200 are women.1 This project uses research, reports, and advocacy on behalf of this often invisible population to address the lack of knowledge and awareness. Women in particular stand to benefit from the increased attention. Because women represent a small fraction of the total population of detainees, their needs often remain unaddressed. The U.S. federal government, which began systematically detaining women in Arizona only as recently as 2001, has not taken steps to adapt detention facilities to address women’s specific needs. Women immigrants end up in detention facilities in two main ways. First, when the border patrol apprehends women who are not from Mexico at the U.S.-Mexico border, it places these women in detention facilities to await transportation to their countries of origin. (Women from Mexico are placed in separate short-term detention facilities and/or immediately repatriated.) Second, women immigrants who commit a crime that requires their deportation enter the facilities after they have served their criminal sentences, while their deportation proceedings are underway. The list of deportable criminal offenses has expanded rapidly over the past ten years. Relatively minor crimes, such as shoplifting or possession of any controlled substance, can be grounds for deportation, even for legal immigrants who have resided in the United States for years. In any case, if a detainee raises a legal claim as to why she should not be deported, she remains in detention pending the proceedings on her claim. She may claim and receive asylum if she will face persecution or torture upon returning to her home country. Alternately, she may be eligible for a legal remedy called “cancellation of removal,” in which a judge determines that the hardship her deportation would impose on her family outweighs its benefits. These legal determinations take months at minimum and sometimes continue for years prior to a final decision. Federal policies now require many immigrants to remain in detention facilities for the duration of this waiting period. Until the mid 1990s, the U.S. federal government did not detain immigrants in substantial numbers, instead releasing them pending their deportation hearing date. But in 1996, the federal law changed dramatically and now mandates detention in the vast majority of cases, in an effort to prevent immigrants from disappearing while their cases are pending. As a result, the number of immigrants detained has increased astronomically, from an average daily population of 6,000 in 1995 to over 27,000 in 2007, and women are being detained in large numbers for the first time (Dow 2007). In the fall of 2007, SIROW launched a documentation effort to gather as much information as possible about conditions in women’s immigration detention facilities in Arizona. The government agency in charge of detention facilities granted me permission to conduct five days of interviews with women detainees in two of the three facilities that house women detainees in the state. I conducted these interviews with the help of three law students in October 2007. In an effort to gather as much information as possible and include a variety of perspectives, we also interviewed attorneys who have represented currently detained women, previous detainees, and detainees’ family members. The project is still in its data collection phase, but many of the key points we hope to highlight in our report have already appeared repeatedly in our interviews. Perhaps most striking is the strain that women immigrants’ detention puts on their families, including their children, who are often U.S. citizens. Current policy and practice permits detainment of many women without regard to the fact that they are the primary caregivers for their families. Detention facilities are often in remote locations, exacerbating the impact of detention on families. Because the U.S. government has only recently begun detaining women in significant numbers, it cannot provide sufficient bed space for women near their communities. As a result, the government transports women to facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away from their homes. Other key areas of concern include the adequacy of medical services available to women detainees, particularly for gender-specific conditions including pregnancy; the mental health services available, especially for women refugees fleeing gender-related violence and abuse; and access to legal and social service providers. Once our researchers have completed the data collection phase, SIROW, with guidance from experts on the needs of at-risk women and organizations devoted to immigration and detention policy reform, will draft recommendations for immediate and long-term responsive measures by the appropriate federal agencies and Congress. We expect that these recommendations will suggest that the federal government consider alternatives to detention. Our research has already affected the students involved. In conducting interviews, students open a window into the lives of women who are far removed from their law school halls. Students have interviewed women from remote countries around the world, many of whom live in circumstances few law students have encountered. These interviews have inspired moments of unexpected connection. The detainees recognize our genuine desire to hear their stories and their ideas for reform. Their willingness to share their experiences with us in the context of a research study has provided the students with an opportunity to view current immigration enforcement laws and policies through a perspective both empathetic and objective. By engaging in this type of research, students develop the capacity to move between large-scale policy considerations and the individual lives those policies affect. These analytical skills, while always essential, are particularly crucial for students aiming to understand and address the effects of globalization. Conclusion Both the Tucson Women Workers Project and the Report on Women in Immigration Detention Facilities bring together a variety of institutions (the university, community-based organizations, and government agencies) and individuals (researchers, students, women immigrants, and advocates) to pursue the common goal of improving the lives of women immigrants in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Because the challenges facing immigrant women are so complex, they are best addressed using collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches. Immigrant women’s circumstances and needs are international in scope and interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing economic, legal, social, and psychological concerns. We hope that our approach will inspire sophisticated and responsive services, publications, and reforms. And we hope that by engaging all participants--researchers, students, and women immigrants alike--in the educationally rich experiences our projects provide, we will encourage them to understand globalization not simply in terms of macroeconomic forces and international relations, but in terms of specific individuals whose capacity to share information, exchange ideas, and work together propels us toward common goals. 1I draw the figures for Arizona from my interviews with service providers and facility personnel in the state.References Dow, M. 2007. Designed to punish: Immigrant detention and deportation. Social Research 74 (2). Torres, J.P. 2007. Statement before the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism (March 15). http://hsc.house.gov/SiteDocuments/20070315162647-42745.pdf. |
