Unincorporated and Unequal: Housing and Environmental Inequality Among Women Farmworkers in Rural California

ABSTRACT This study examines how intersecting inequalities based on gender, race, class, and citizenship shape the lived experiences of Mexican and Mexican American women farmworkers in California's San Joaquin Valley, focusing on municipal boundary‐making and spatial exclusion. Drawing on 35 in‐depth interviews and feminist qualitative methods, I show how residential segregation concentrates many low‐wage and immigrant workers in unincorporated communities with limited access to basic services, safe and affordable housing, reliable transportation, and clean air and water. These conditions demonstrate how legal, municipal, and geographic boundaries operate together as mechanisms of exclusion. I conceptualize these communities as internal borderlands, where structural inequalities take shape spatially and are intensified by environmental conditions. The findings highlight how these overlapping boundaries create layered vulnerabilities with implications for housing, health, and environmental justice.