The impacts of power domains on irregular migrants as seen in La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas

This article analyses a recent Latin American film by Luis Mandoki, La vida precoz y breve de Sabina Rivas/The Precocious and Brief Life of Sabina Rivas (2012), whose main character, a 16-year-old Honduran girl, is exploited and prostituted. This article explores the issues of oppression, intersectionality and border crossings as depicted in this film. I examine how this film deals with the portrayal of intersecting systems of oppression (e.g. race, social class, gender and age) and interrelated domains of power (structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and interpersonal) that structure irregular migrants’ experience at the border. Irregular migration at the Guatemala-Mexican and Mexican-United States borders is commonly associated with oppressive treatment and the abuse of authority. Therefore, my analysis of this film also demonstrates the complex ways in which young irregular migrants are subjected to many forms of abuse by the authorities in power at the border-crossings.