Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnographic Study of Rivaling State Jurisdictions and the Politics of Health Care Access in Mexico

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This project explores legal regulation and women's experiences in Mexico, contrasting two different states with different legal frameworks. Women can strategize about the law that affects them by going from their home state to Mexico City, with different legal rules. An ethnographic study will be conducted in advocacy networks in Mexico City and court archives in the adjacent state of Guanajuato, located to the west of Mexico City. The researcher will work with advocacy groups in Mexico City and women who access the groups, and with legal documents in archives. Advocacy groups located in Mexico City enable women to mobilize the law; this study will evaluate contrasts to address two central questions: 1) How are conflicting legal and moral discourses of kinship, obligation and autonomy entangled in neighboring jurisdictions with different legislation and 2) How do women negotiate the legal pressures generated by rivaling juridical regimes? With regard to intellectual merit, this research project will bring valuable insight into legal mobilization, legal advocacy, and implementation of new laws in different jurisdictions in Mexico, an area that is understudied and with legal frameworks that raise new challenges within law and social sciences. By combining archival research with ethnographic methods such as participant-observation and iterative open ended interviews, this investigation will contribute to knowledge on legal mobilization when there are differences in law in neighboring jurisdictions. With regard to broader impacts, this project will allow the training of a graduate student, and provide feedback to community groups in Mexico concerning how women strategize when engaging legal regulation.