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Life along the Nafta Highway

Transnational Living Strategies on the US/Mexico Border

California State University, San Marcos, USA

This article examines the transnational living strategies utilized by women on the US/Mexico border while critically exploring the contradictory coexistence of successful transnational corridors, such as the NAFTA highway, and the poor residents who live alongside them. The article focuses on the transnational living strategies they use in order to improve their living conditions in Starr County, Texas. The author argues that transmigrant women and their families use migration and settlement in the Lower Rio Grande Valley as a way of improving their standard of living. However, the contradiction is that they end up living in an area known for its poor living conditions and high unemployment rates.This article is an ethnographic study of the ways in which women and their families negotiate poverty in a poor, rural border community while also showing how a poor and rural border area can both exacerbate and alleviate woman's poverty.

Key Words: border studies • chicana studies • gender • kinship • poverty • transnationalism

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