Soñar con quedarse: Experiencias de mujeres frente al desalojo en la Ciudad de México

In this article we analyze the differential effects of gender in cases of forced residential eviction and displacement to the periphery as they are lived by women residents of Mexico City. We consider eviction to be one of the least addressed problems in urban studies, but one that exhibits great strength for discussing the issues of housing and the city from a feminist perspective. We hypothesize that this is an expulsion not only of women, but of racialized women. Gathering concepts of eviction, mobility, and immobility, “racial banishment”, gentrification and others, and through a qualitative investigation that reconstructs the stories of eviction and displacement collected through interviews with women from the “Eviction Network of Mexico City”, we offer emotional and embodied texture to these abstract urban processes. In this context, the findings show how ethnic-racial issues intersect and produce specific gendered effects. At the same time, we pinpoint how forced displacement can be understood from the perspective of mobility and immobility, where aspects such as access to the city and insecurity are very sensitive for women, and finally, we address how to understand the experience of eviction from an emotional perspective.