System-Impacted Motherwork examines Southern California’s child welfare system and the life course criminalization Latina mothers experience by situating their health and healing strategies as responses to punishment through System-Impacted Motherwork (SIM). Drawing on 25 photo-elicitation life history interviews with Latina (Central American, Mexican, Chicana) mothers from Southern California who have been involved with child protective services (CPS), and legal case analysis, this project offers System-Impacted Motherwork, a framework grounded in life course, intersectional feminist perspectives, for examining how mothers navigate mental health alongside child welfare system and various institutions of control. In this presentation, SIM is employed to examine how multi-institutional criminalization over the life course creates social conditions of threat that are detrimental to Latina mothers’ health and wellbeing. System-Impacted Motherwork excavates how mothers respond to criminalization and sheds new light on the maternal strategies system-involved Latina mothers enlist as they navigate the everyday processes of punishment through state-created categories, violence, and healing. This talk also examines how SIM illuminates the interconnections of systemic punishment, and constructions of “unfit” motherhood that manifest into strategies to navigate microcosms of U.S. medicalized carceral state by illustrating how Latinx families create 1. Safety 2. Material resources, and 3. Spiritual healing. Overall, this research contributes to the fields of Sociology, Criminology, Public Health, and Feminist Studies as it reveals how motherwork supports the longevity, healing, and quality of life for poor families by moving away from a punitive approach to violence, and into healing-centered intersectional responses grounded in collective care for intergenerational healing. 

 

Bio: 

 

Katherine Maldonado Fabela is a mother scholar from South Central Los Angeles, and a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include critical criminology, health, inequalities, and visual methodology. Her research previously examined the experiences of gang-affiliated mothers and the health effects of criminalization and violence, what she conceptualized as life course criminalization. Currently, her research examines the experiences of Latina/Chicana mothers with the carceral system, specifically the child welfare system. The investigation centers the institutional violence that mothers navigate via child welfare, how it affects their mental health, and the ways they resist and heal from multiple forms of criminalization through motherwork strategies. Katherine is a Pre-Doctoral Ford Foundation Fellow, American Sociology Association Minority Fellow, and American Association of University Women Fellow, among others. Her research has been funded and recognized by grants including NSF, Abolitionist Teaching Network grant, Women’s Health, Gender and empowerment grant, among others. Katherine’s research has been published in the Journal of Critical Criminology, Aztlan Journal of Chicana/o Studies, Criminal Justice Education as well as multiple book chapters. Her work has been included in policymaking toolkits at the United Nations and she has served as an expert witness in immigration asylum cases.