The symbolic violence of tolerance zones: Constructing the spatial marginalization of female Central American migrant sex workers in Mexico

Abstract In this paper, we explore how the spatial ordering of sex-work in southern Mexico naturalizes the presence of migrant women in designated “tolerance zones”. Drawing on a feminist approach to ethnographic research in the city of Dominguez, Chiapas, we critically analyze the symbolic powers concealed and enacted through the official discourse of “tolerance” in public health regulations on commercial sex and embodied everyday life of migrant women from Central America. We engage with feminist debates regarding geographies of sex work and oppression to illustrate how tolerance zones mediate and maintain the marginal status of female sex workers who, despite their irregular migration status, are constructed (and view themselves) as bodies in “need of tolerance ”. Our analysis of spatial practices that govern tolerance zones illustrates how the discourse of tolerance becomes a vehicle for symbolic violence, naturalizing unequal social relations of power in the lives of migrant Central American women.