This paper places Latour’s (2004) concept of “body talk” alongside literature on symbolic boundaries to consider how the symbolic judgements and evaluations that comprise body talk frame the impact of structural pressures on the body. Drawing from individual and focus group interviews with 36 first-generation Arab Canadian immigrant women, this study shows that the female body, and practices of feeding and exercising it, are sites where structural inequalities embedded in the immigration process are materially experienced, resisted, and managed. In constructing boundaries between Arab women’s bodies in Canada and the Arab world alongside those of so-called “Canadian” women, we argue that women communicate their immigration and settlement struggles and recoup dignity otherwise compromised in the migration process—ultimately allowing them to frame their struggles as products of their moral integrity as immigrant wives and mothers. Through these findings, this paper demonstrates the role of body talk in framing the impact of structural pressures on the body, while simultaneously highlighting the centrality of boundary work to that framing.

中文翻译：

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阿拉伯加拿大移民妇女的身体谈话和边界工作

本文将 Latour (2004) 的“身体谈话”概念与有关符号边界的文献放在一起，以考虑构成身体谈话的符号判断和评估如何构建结构性压力对身体的影响。通过对 36 名第一代阿拉伯裔加拿大移民妇女的个人和焦点小组访谈，该研究表明，女性的身体以及喂养和锻炼身体的做法是移民过程中结构性不平等受到实质性体验、抵制和抵制的场所。管理。在加拿大和阿拉伯世界的阿拉伯妇女身体与所谓的“加拿大”妇女身体之间建立界限时，我们认为，女性表达了她们的移民和定居斗争，并恢复了在移民过程中受到损害的尊严——最终使她们能够将自己的斗争框架化为作为移民妻子和母亲的道德操守的产物。通过这些发现，本文展示了身体谈话在构建结构压力对身体的影响方面的作用，同时强调了边界工作对该框架的中心性。