Grandmothers on Guard

Gender, Aging, and the Minutemen at the US-Mexico Border

By Jennifer Johnson

University of Texas Press

For about a decade, one of the most influential forces in US anti-immigrant politics was the Minuteman Project. The armed volunteers made headlines patrolling the southern border. What drove their ethno-nationalist politics?

Jennifer L. Johnson spent hundreds of hours observing and interviewing Minutemen, hoping to answer that question. She reached surprising conclusions. While the public face of border politics is hypermasculine—men in uniforms, fatigues, and suits—older women were central to the Minutemen. Women mobilized support and took part in border missions. These women compel us to look beyond ideological commitments and material benefits in seeking to understand the appeal of right-wing politics. Johnson argues that the women of the Minutemen were motivated in part by the gendered experience of aging in America. In a society that makes old women irrelevant, aging white women found their place through anti-immigrant activism, which wedded native politics to their concern for the safety of their families. Grandmothers on Guard emphasizes another side of nationalism: the yearning for inclusion. The nation the Minutemen imagined was not only a space of exclusion but also one in which these women could belong.

There's...plenty of interesting material to latch onto and grapple with [in Grandmothers on Guard]...In a culture where aging women often feel invisible and undervalued, Johnson’s research explores how the women she interviewed found both a like-minded community and a renewed sense of purpose in life...For journalists, scholars, researchers attempting to study hate groups the Appendix to Johnson’s book presents invaluable insights — what to do, what not to do. When crossing the invisible line between those who share our beliefs and those who do not, the stakes could not be higher. Sightlines

Johnson...opens with the revelation that, despite being branded by others and themselves as 'male' and 'hypermasculine,' the virulently anti-immigrant Minutemen Project has incorporated women since its inception...Based on in-depth ethnographic work during the 2010s with 17 such women, most of them grandmothers, the author explores their nativist public activism along with their private life experiences...For many Americans, these grandmothers' performance of 'old womanhood' in the context of militant nativism and white supremacy may be offensive, but it leads Johnson, as a scholar and feminist, to seek understanding, if not empathy, for older women who desperately struggle with becoming irrelevant and invisible in a fast-changing society they cannot accept...Recommended. CHOICE

A scholarly book that reads like watching a fast-paced documentary...Johnson brings a wealth of knowledge of border politics and context to this fascinating book. BuzzFeed News

Johnson’s ethnography fills a much-needed gap regarding the role of women in far-right groups like the Minutemen...[Grandmothers on Guard] makes an important contribution to understanding how gender and age intersect to define the evolution of the family, people’s relationships with the state, as well as changing forms of political participation. Mobilization: An International Quarterly

Through this work Johnson helps move the needle of knowledge on far-right ideology, contributes to the broader understanding of the US-based anti-immigrant movement, and also sheds light on how many conservative white Americans experience gender at advanced ages. Social Forces

[Johnson's] book is a model of how to study a marginalized population...The book has two real and lasting strengths. One is its careful and caring description of how a political issue can offer aging women a way to express themselves and make themselves visible in a society prepared to ignore them. The other important contribution is to lay out, in richly developed terms, a view of citizenship, and particularly civic responsibility, that prioritizes protecting the homeland from social and demographic change. In these turbulent times, such concerns are salient for many Americans, but not particularly for the cosmopolitan elites whom intellectuals know best. This book is an opportunity to get better acquainted with a less welcoming point of view. Perspectives on Politics

Drawing broadly on multiple areas of social science, this ambitious ethnographic study fills a gap in the border politics literature...Grandmothers on Guard is a significant work of scholarship whose import extends beyond border studies narrowly defined...While this is an academic study and will surely attract the attention of a broad array of social science scholars, the writing invites a broader audience. Johnson skillfully blends academic writing, with journalistic reporting and storytelling. This results in a work that engages the reader and brings the women in the study to life. Journal of Borderlands Studies

Timely and fascinating...this is an engaging and well-written book that would be an excellent addition to courses on gender, aging, nationalism, or social movements...Grandmothers on Guard adds critical and novel insight into our understanding of the surging interest and participation in extremist activism—this is important work that is sure to appeal to audiences beyond academia. Contemporary Sociology

A timely, important contribution...Drawing on an impressive 900 hours of participant observation and 25 in-depth interviews with members of the Minutemen movement’s California chapter, Johnson gives readers a rare glimpse into the daily world of organized nativism...Grandmothers on Guard immerses readers in a movement that, arguably, set the stage for Trump’s victory. This reason alone makes the book of interest to political sociologists. Scholars of immigration, politics, gender, race, and aging can also learn a lot from the author’s observations about how grandmotherhood—and I would add white grandmotherhood—can inspire political identity making, collective mobilization, and nativism. That the book is also a pleasurable read will make it appealing to any sociologist. American Journal of Sociology

Grandmothers on Guard offers an utterly fascinating window into a social world that few outside the insular domains of right-wing activists see, much less understand. Earning trust while doing longitudinal fieldwork, especially across a yawning cultural divide, takes enormous patience and skill—and a steadfast commitment to both the ethnographic craft and the intellectual mission it supports. With this timely book, Johnson has produced a deeply contextualized, textured, and penetrating account of women’s political worldviews and activism at that most poignant of social boundaries, the US-Mexico border. We need more books like Grandmothers on Guard, wherein writers press through discomfort and preconceptions and toward a deeper understanding of their objects of inquiry. What a superb read! Chad Broughton

Jennifer L. Johnson is the R. Todd Ruppert Professor of International Studies and a professor of sociology at Kenyon College. She is an affiliate of the Center for Right-Wing Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Acknowledgments
Introduction. Border Politics and Invisible Women
Chapter 1. Granny Brigades and Political Spectacle at the US-Mexico Border
Chapter 2. Doing Old Womanhood at the Edge of the Nation-State
Chapter 3. Grandma Grizzlies to the Rescue of Family and Nation
Chapter 4. Misogyny Minuteman-Style and Women Tough Enough to Take It
Chapter 5. Bringing the Border Back Home
Conclusion. From Republican Motherhood to Patriotic Grandmotherhood
Appendix. Walking the Line
References
Index

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