Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

‘Anchor/Terror Babies’ And Latina Bodies: Immigration Rhetoric In The 21st Century And The Feminization Of Terrorism, Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

The post-9/11 era in the United States has revealed a specific fear about immigrants as terrorist threats. Although this fear manifests as a generalized one against any immigrant, when we analyze public discourse, we can find rhetorical patterns involving specific groups, with Latinos/as at center. U.S. public discourse typically conjures images of immigrants as terrorists, which are either genderless or male, and it is activated and cultivated in moments of national crisis (most recently, the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attacks). In this paper, we move beyond notions of immigrants as either genderless or male to discuss post-9/11 perceptions of immigrant …