“I Have Tasted Freedom”: An Intersectional Analysis of College-Going Latinas’ Desire for and Meanings of Mobility

Abstract

Research examining socioeconomic and spatial mobility has shown that gender and sexuality inform approaches to both types of mobility. For Latinas, various axes of power limit, facilitate, and impact their access to sexual and socioeconomic desire, including that related to mobility. We build on these insights to consider the following: (1) How do gender and sexuality inform the meanings that socioeconomically marginalized Latinas assign to mobility in relation to their desire to go to college? And (2) how do they experience mobility while in college, particularly as it pertains to their gender and sexual subjectivities? To answer these questions, we examine interviews with thirty-one Latinas, combined from two separate research projects. Our analysis uses Michelle Fine and Sara I. McClelland’s concept of “thick desire” to facilitate an intersectional analysis of the meanings that college-going Latinas assign to mobility. We contend that while economically marginalized Latinas view going away to college as a strategy for socioeconomic mobility, their pursuit of this is also interwoven with their desire for gender and sexual freedom. We also find that college shaped their articulation of what mobility means in relation to the gender and sexual lives they desire for themselves.