Transnational Roots/Routes of Gendered Racial Violence

How is the escalating violence direct at women a racial violence, that is, violence directed at women because they are Indigenous, racialized or Black? What analytics are available to us from women’s resistance? In Canada, there is an inquiry into missing and murdered Indige-nous women and girls. In several parts of the United States, Mexico and Latin America, the death toll of missing and murdered women rises every day and although the murders are de-scribed generically, Indigenous women are over-represented. At borders, a distinct form of sexualized violence prevails against Indigenous and racialized women. States have begun to collapse border zones and zones of prostitution, as in Mexico’s zonas de tolerencia, where Indigenous women migrants are disproportionately the targets of violence while working in prostitution. Black women enduring the high levels of police violence directed towards their communities find their own bodies targeted in specific ways. These forms of gendered racial violence compel us to explore how to understand the historical and transnational roots and routes of violence, and to consider the interconnections between sites of violence. For example, how is interpersonal and state violence related? Where is race in the violence against women generated by militarism in Asia? What does race have to do with sex trafficking?