The Woman-immigrant’s Search for the ‘New Mestiza’ Consciousness: A Comparative Study of Crossing Mexico’s Other Border and Kantatar

Abstract

Globalisation has come to shed its inimitable influence on the contemporary idea of borders. Borders today are set apart emerging with an altered nature and an altered series of meanings. Presently, we do locate quite a distinct difference between outside borders and inside/secondary borders. Borders on the outside are gradually melting while the secondary borders are tightening. Traditionally borders are supposed to create barriers and then contain within. However, in certain cases, this function is being replaced by a peculiar bridging function enabling atypical contact. As a result, the meaning of borders needs a re-discovering and re-framing. The scope of Border Studies is growing by the day trying to understand how this politico-cartographical labyrinthe is a constant life-determining agent in the lives of those who survive in and around it. Though the paper primarily considers the element of ‘borders’ and migration for study however the question of ‘enclaves’ is also touched upon. The paper looks at the figure of the woman immigrant, in the context of the Indo-Bangladesh and US-Mexico border. The two texts in question are - a 2005 Bengali film called Kantatar and a docu-feature Crossing Mexico’s Other Border shot as an episode of the Fringes docu-series by VICE. The texts are studied within the theoretical dimension of Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s famous work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).

Keywords

• borders
• migrant woman
• identity
• hydbrid realities
• state and governance