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190 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 9 Brazilian and Mexican Women Interacting with God in Florida PATRICIA FORTUNY LORET DE MOLA, LÚCIA RIBEIRO, AND MIRIAN SOLÍS LIZAMA This chapter analyzes the relationship between lived religion, gender, and migration in South Florida. Few studies examine this tripartite relationship, as analyses of female migration normally emphasize social processes related to labor markets. Even those studies that explore changes in gender roles, conceptions of femininity and masculinity, and family life that result from the process of migration tend to privilege the economic variable and ignore religion altogether . For example, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ernestine Avila offer a very nuanced analysis of “transnational motherhood,” showing how the meaning of motherhood changes for Latinas who have left their children behind, in their countries of origin, to work as nannies for American children. According to them, “transnational mothers seek to mesh caregiving and guidance with breadwinning. While breadwinning may require long-term and long-distance separations from their children, they attempt to sustain family connections by showing emotional ties through letters, phone calls, and money sent home.” Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila, however, do not examine the role of religion in the attempts by transnational mothers to deal with the alienation and anxiety of family separation and to maintain emotional, moral, and spiritual connections with the children in their sending countries. Building on and going beyond previous studies, we highlight the cultural dimensions of gender that contribute to the creation of social differences among people. Because we see male-female distinctions as human constructs, which are produced and reproduced through ideologies and cultural practices, we argue that it is crucial to understand the multiple roles that religion plays in the formation of fluid and contested gender identities, relationships, and ideologies . After all, despite increasing secularization, religion continues to be one of the most significant frames of reference for Mexican and Brazilian women. Our objective is to analyze how gender and the power relations that exist among BRAZILIAN AND MEXICAN WOMEN 191 immigrants are expressed through religious practice in a specific migratory context. As discussed in chapter , we adopt Robert Orsi’s concept of “lived religion” that focuses on the formation of the self in “an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the realities of everyday life.” In this manner, we avoid reproducing the patriarchal view of religion, which assumes that power, authority, and legitimacy are located exclusively at the apex of religious structures. Rather, power and resistance flow through them, from top to bottom and vice versa. Stressing only the patriarchal dimension of religion denies women’s agency within the religious sphere. As Orsi emphasizes, “theological practice cannot be gridded in any simple way along the axis of ‘elite’ and ‘popular.’ ” Rather, religion “is shaped and experienced in the interplay among venues of everyday experience.” The narratives we collected among immigrant women constantly reveal relations of subordination, resistance, and negotiation with men in family settings , in churches, and beyond. Men are present in women’s narratives as social actors that women respond to and interact with through opposition or subordination , according to the circumstances. Immigrants exercise power in the religious , social, and economic domains. As many studies show, immigrant women often take advantage of the American multicultural environment—with its new and different opportunities—to develop an increased awareness of gender and a capacity to resist systemic inequality. As Patricia Pessar writes, “Many scholars have examined the impact that immigrant women’s regular wage work has on gendered relations. A review of this literature points to the fact that despite gender inequalities in the labor market and workplace, immigrant women employed in the United States generally gain greater personal autonomy and independence, whereas men lose ground” (emphasis added). This presents a contradiction: immigrant women are perceived, and perceive themselves, to occupy a situation of social, cultural, economic, and political disadvantage and a subordinate position simply because they are women. In the United States, however, women discover socioeconomic opportunities not available in their homelands. Pessar argues that “a gendered perspective . . . encourages an examination of the ways in which migration simultaneously reinforces and challenges patriarchy in its multiple forms” (emphasis added). For our purpose of comparing and contrasting immigrant women’s experiences , we chose two immigrant groups in Florida: Brazilians in Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach and Mexicans in Immokalee. The first important difference between these groups of women is income: most Brazilian women earn between $, and $, per month, while only  percent of Mexican immigrant women in Immokalee earn $, to $, monthly...

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