Eric Shragge

Disciplining Dissent: NGOs and Community Organizations

In the context of neo-liberal globalization, we argue that many local community organizations and international development and advocacy NGOs share certain characteristics that impact struggles for justice, North and South. These include professionalization, collaboration with, and recognition and support from the state and/or international institutions, and a detachment from more critical forms of resistance. Drawing from experience and analysis of the Quebec community sector and involvement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in ‘global justice’ movements, we suggest that this exclusion and reshaping of political space presents new challenges for peoples movements. We examine: (a) the development and professionalization of community organizations and NGOs; (b) the role of knowledge in consolidating professional power; and (c) challenges to these hegemonic trends from within activist organizing milieux. En el contexto de la globalización neoliberal, sostenemos que muchas de las organizaciones cívicas locales y Organizaciones no gubernamentales (NGOs, por sus siglas en inglés) de defensa y desarrollo internacional, comparten ciertas características que impactan las luchas por la justicia, tanto al norte como al sur. Estas incluyen profesionalización, colaboración y reconocimiento y apoyo del estado y/o las instituciones internacionales, y un desinterés de formas más críticas de resistencia. En base a la experiencia y el análisis del sector de la comunidad de Quebec y la participación de organizaciones no gubernamentales (NGOs) en movimientos de ‘justicia global’, sugerimos que esta exclusión y la reestructuración del espacio político presentan nuevos desafíos a los movimientos de la gente. Examinamos: (a) el desarrollo y la profesionalización de organizaciones cívicas y NGOs; (b) el papel del conocimiento en consolidar el poder profesional; y (c) los retos a estas tendencias hegemónicas desde el interior del entorno que organiza a los activistas. 在新自由主义全球化背景下，我们认为许多地方性社区组织与国际发展和游说性非政府组织共享某些特征，在北方和南方都影响了正义斗争。这些特征包括专业化、与国家和/或国际机构合作，得到其承认和支持，以及远离更为批判性的抵抗形式。基于对魁北克社区的经验及其分析，以及非政府组织（NGOs）在“全球正义”运动中的参与，我们表明，这种排他性和政治空间的重塑对大众运动提出了新的挑战。我们考察了：（1）社区组织和非政府组织的发展和专业化；（2）知识在巩固专业权力中的作用；以及（3）对来自于活动家组织背景内部的这些支配性趋势的挑战。

Community Organizations and Local Governance in a Metropolitan Region

In a context of globalization, municipalities and metropolitan regions are involved in international competition to support economic growth. This leads to new forms of collaboration between public authorities and businesses, giving birth to new forms of urban and metropolitan governances. Moreover, many old neighborhoods of the central city and some districts of the old suburbs face growth in unemployment and poverty. In these local territories, community organizations put forward local development practices that aim to improve living conditions. These organizations cooperate with other community organizations, public institutions and private agencies. Thus, they are embedded in a kind of governance: a local governance. This article, based on the case of the metropolitan region of Montreal, highlights the conception of local development of these community organizations, the local governance in which they participate, and the link between this local governance with the urban and metropolitan ones.

Organizing for Immigrant Rights: Policy Barriers and Community Campaigns

Immigration to Canada has changed in basic ways the composition of the labor force. Over the past 40 years, a large wave of immigrants has arrived from the countries of the “Global South”. Many have arrived with high levels of education and qualifications; however, the jobs they receive are at the bottom of the labor market. The Immigrant Workers Center (IWC) in Montreal is an organization that provides individual services, education on rights, and organizes immigrant workers for workplace justice. This article describes three campaigns led by the center. They reflect the exclusion of immigrant workers from coverage in policy areas related to heath care, compensation for workplace injury, and benefits for collective lay-offs in the textile sector. The article concludes with some of the lessons learned in these campaigns.

Learning through Community

Alumni News 5-7 In your years at SU, you read endless “Tinto” citations in your books and research articles (yes, our very own Vincent Tinto) referencing how critical it is for college students to integrate both socially and academically during the college experience. Immersing or engaging actively in and outside of classrooms with one’s peers, faculty, advisors, and/or student affairs professionals has been a key factor influencing student success, persistence, and graduation. It should be not be a surprise therefore that similar factors would influence the success of graduate students. However, many of our policies (or lack thereof) and actions, often aimed at accommodating graduate students’ complex, demanding lives and competing priorities, have in fact hindered student progress. At the time our department had appeared understanding when it approved students enrolling in a few classes, taking a year long leave, or taking years to start working on (and keep working on) the dissertation. We now realize that often our efforts have only contributed to students feeling disconnected to our program; they are frequently disengaged in the academic experience, and often, unsuccessful in completing their degrees. We all lose and feel badly when these outcomes occur. Consequently, we introduced some expectations that we hope will help promote continued immersion in the graduate school experience. For example, master’s students minimally must complete 9 credits hours per year, typically resulting in a course each semester and one in the summer. They also must participate in a 9-week orientation seminar (Graduate Interest Group Seminar) that serves to help students get to know and work with each other, to learn the habits and norms that characterize serious scholarly work, and to become familiar with critical department and campus resources available to help students meet ongoing program and class requirements (e.g. securing a practicum). All doctoral students are now required to take a minimum of 12 credit hours per year and engage in an intensive all-faculty review every 18 months. The purpose of this review is to examine if sufficient progress has been made and to develop goals and action plans for the months ahead. If students fail to progress, we are prepared to ask them to leave the program so we can redirect our energies as a faculty to those students who are committed to immerse themselves into scholarly work. We recognize that some of these expectations may result in some important negotiations with family members and work supervisors. We truly believe however that the quality of students’ graduate experience (and future professional endeavors) will be enriched by our intentional efforts to integrate our students both socially and academically into our graduate learning community. We look forward to being more consistent with practicing what we preach! Best wishes for a great summer and new beginnings in Fall 2009!

While No One is Watching: Learning in Social Action Among People who are Excluded from the Labour Market

This chapter profiles non-profit community/trade union organizations run by/for marginalized groups. Under the pressures of a turbulent social and economic context, many have evolved a contradictory practice that blends social and economic development. While breaking with earlier traditions of opposition, they have fostered new traditions that operate “while no one is watching” to transform the lives of individuals facing a rough ride in capitalist societies. Informal learning is a significant part of this shift. The authors of this chapter have been involved for many years in community organizations and/or trade unions. Our argument draws on several years of collaborative research done with three such organizations in Montreal and Toronto, Canada. It documents informal learning arising from practice in three areas: learning to participate; learning to re/connect with others; learning a new definition of self. We view these as core features of what Foley (1999) calls “learning in social action.” For us, this phrase references actions ranging from informal conversation to formal collective process. In aligning ourselves with Foley’s work, we are contributing to a stream of literature on informal learning that could be characterized as “learning power and action in resisting communities” (Adams, 1997). It encompasses the learning struggles of women, First Nations and other racial/ethnic minorities, youth and the elderly. As much as possible, we have written this chapter in plain language with words in common use. We did not want the academic use and histories of words to take precedence over their every day meanings. Also, we have organized the presentation of our findings in generic categories. This strategy arose from our discomfort with the ways in which terminology used in previous drafts, term such as “political learning” or “solidarity learning,” required us to reference and position ourselves with respect to academic debates (Church et al. 2000). Against the grain of academic practice, we chose not to privilege the categories derived from our work over the case descriptions that give them life. Thus, while broadly locating ourselves, we have resisted establishing our legitimacy in this way. Our primary focus is on the community organizations we have studied, and how their participants live

Contested Community: A Selected and Critical History of Community Organizing

This chapter discusses the diverse ways community has been utilized and understood, mobilized and invoked over time, with lessons for current theory and practice. In a nutshell, the history of community initiatives in the United States reveals a complex past, one which if the lens is wide angle instantly expands understanding of the varied origins, goals, politics, and shapes community efforts take. The complex history and diverse forms result from a number of factors, chief among them the historical context. Community initiatives are shaped by and constrained by the broader political-economy and at times challenge this context. This chapter proposes that this history is a contested one because community efforts are fundamentally political and part of the central social struggles and movements of their time. By offering central lessons from the history of community organizing and doing so with an eye to periodization and contextualization, this chapter contributes to a broader and eclectic understanding of community and community organizing.