Shannon Gleeson

Funding Immigrant Organizations: Suburban Free-Riding and Local Civic Presence

The authors argue that taken-for-granted notions of deservingness and legitimacy among local government officials affect funding allocations for organizations serving disadvantaged immigrants, even in politically progressive places. Analysis of Community Development Block Grant data in the San Francisco Bay Area reveals significant inequality in grants making to immigrant organizations across central cities and suburbs. With data from 142 interviews and documentary evidence, the authors elaborate how a history of continuous migration builds norms of inclusion and civic capacity for public-private partnerships. They also identify the phenomenon of “suburban free riding” to explain how and why suburban officials rely on central city resources to serve immigrants, but do not build and fund partnerships with immigrant organizations in their own jurisdictions. The analysis affirms the importance of distinguishing between types of immigrant destinations, but argues that scholars need to do so using a regional lens.

Assessing the Scope of Immigrant Organizations: Official Undercounts and Actual Underrepresentation

We examine the official scope and actual coverage of immigrant civil society in seven California cities using a widely employed 501(c)3 database. First, we code immigrant organizations in official data and compare their number and proportion with population statistics; we find substantially fewer immigrant organizations than we would expect. Second, we measure the organizational undercount of immigrant civil society by calculating the number of publicly present immigrant organizations not captured in official data. We do this for four immigrant-origin communities (Indian, Mexican, Portuguese, and Vietnamese) using 160 key informant interviews and extensive examination of directories and media (ethnic and mainstream). We find a notable undercount, which varies by city and immigrant group. Considering both underrepresentation and undercounts, Mexican-origin organizations seem at a particular disadvantage. Our findings carry important implications for resource inequalities and advocacy capacity in minority communities, underscoring the need for further research on the vitality of immigrant civil society.

Precarity and agency through a migration lens

Abstract This special issue leverages the migrant experience to better understand precarity and agency in the contemporary world. By way of introduction, we examine the broader bodies of literature on precarity and agency, relate them to research on migration, and link them to the contributions in the special issue. Laying a foundation for further research, we illuminate three approaches to study the precarity–migration–agency nexus: an industry-specific approach, a sending country/deportee approach, and a collective action approach. We conclude with a critical analysis of freedom and national borders, considering the ‘open borders’ movement, postnational citizenship, and opposition to marketization.

‘They come here to work’: an evaluation of the economic argument in favor of immigrant rights

Advocates commonly highlight the exploitation that hard-working undocumented immigrants commonly suffer at the hands of employers, the important contribution they make to the US economy, and the fiscal folly of border militarization and enhanced immigration enforcement policies. In this paper, I unpack these economic rationales for expanding immigrant rights, and examine the nuanced ways in which advocates deploy this frame. To do so, I rely on statements issued by publicly present immigrant rights groups in six places: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Texas, and Washington, DC. I also draw on interviews with immigrant advocates in San Jose, CA and Houston, TX, press releases from two alternative national immigrant rights organizations, and an ethnographic photo-documentation of immigrant rights mobilizations in 2012–2014. Economic rationales, I emphasize, can be found in each of these contexts, but are not mutually exclusive to other justifications, including narratives about civil, human, and family rights for immigrants. However, I argue that an economic framing of immigrant rights nonetheless runs the risk reifying work over conventional understandings of criminality, often relies on a narrow definition of economic worth, and could have negative consequences for coalition building.

Undocumented workers' transitions: legal status, migration, and work in Europe

exclusion, physical and verbal assaults; and of the widespread downskilling of the migrants. However, the new dominant narrative itself can be used to distinguish the good (integrated) migrants from the bad (unintegrated) ones; the old British Caribbean (good) from the new developing world migrant (bad); recast the journey as a male one, and ignore the women’s contribution to the British nation’s story. Like the Huguenots escaping in a barrel from the 1700s, the Windrush has made the ideological journey from object of contention to exemplar of idealized migrant that enables the official erasure of the struggles and resistance behind this journey (rather like the Abolition celebrations of 2007). The use of the narrative as a benchmark for new migrants, is, as Kushner demonstrates, part of a process: ‘... the myth of a tolerant and decent society that protects the needy and vulnerable has enabled Britain to remember some migrant journeys. Others however... have been subject to near total amnesia’ (230). Kushner underscores that remembering is above all a political process of selection and exclusion, and that national memories as well as migrant recasting of narratives are part and parcel of this process. Beyond the author’s obvious craftsmanship and empathy for his subjects, what emerges from this is the complexity of the struggle for meaning. In a context where much of the dominant discourse on migrants (and their descendants) seeks to portray them, en masse, as a drain on resources, potential criminals and the source of the decline of British values, and where the restrictionists, as Kushner wrily notes, ‘have won this battle over public history in Britain’ (97), he provides us with an interpretation that undermines the lazy and insidious logic behind this victory. In his text, all the actors are -admittedly from different positions of powerengaged in producing, resisting and reproducing the meanings imposed on the narratives. The migrants here are not mere ciphers of the ‘ideal’ hardworking, unthreatening and invisible minority, at one end of the spectrum, or the devious criminal freeloader at the other, but real people caught in difficult positions, with baggage, pain, creativity, talents and faith, above all, faith, in what Britain could be with them in it.

A New Approach to Migrant Labor Rights Enforcement: The Crisis of Undocumented Worker Abuse and Mexican Consular Advocacy in the United States

This paper examines the genesis and evolution of consular efforts to enforce the workplace rights of immigrant workers in the United States. We draw on a survey of 52 Mexican consulates in the United States, in-depth interviews with the initial cohort of 15 consular participants in the Semana de Derechos Laborales/Labor Rights Week, and several key informants who helped coordinate these efforts in the community. Our findings confirm a shift from “limited” to “active” engagement over the last decade on the part of the Mexican government (Délano 2011), placing special emphasis on the role played by non-governmental actors in producing this shift. We document how this new orientation evolved with respect to workplace rights, leading to the creation of an annual Labor Rights Week that today coordinates efforts between local consular offices, federal and state labor standards enforcement agencies, and other immigrant worker advocates. We argue that consular representatives, while endowed with unique resources and legitimacy, are constrained in their approach to defend the rights of immigrant workers. The configuration and extent of consular collaborations also depend on the maturity of local networks and on synergistic collaborations with local NGOs and labor unions to increase the efficacy and impact of their efforts in the communities they serve.

Brokering Immigrant Worker Rights: An Examination of Local Immigration Control, Administrative Capacity and Civil Society

We know a great deal about the clash between federal immigration and labour standards enforcement directives, but less regarding how these two processes are functioning at the local level and the role that demographic factors and civil society play. This article examines the impact of a climate of local immigration enforcement on worker legal mobilisation in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the USA. I focus on national origin discrimination and find that MSAs with a 287(g) agreement within their boundaries have lower claims rates. Conversely, claims rates are higher in MSAs where an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) agency is present. Interactive models suggest a positive dynamic of demographic insulation, whereby the negative effect of local immigration enforcement on claims-making is diminished in more heavily Latino immigrant places, and the negative impact of a larger Latino immigrant workforce is mitigated with the presence of an enforcement agency. Civil society has a positive impact on claims-making, but with no evidence that 287(g) MSAs with varying concentrations of civil society fare any better or worse. While previous research has concluded a positive impact of 501c(3) organisations on legal mobilisation, this more localised perspective reveals the continuing relevance of labour unions.

Means to an End: An Assessment of the Status-blind Approach to Protecting Undocumented Worker Rights

This article applies the tenets of bureaucratic incorporation theory to an investigation of bureaucratic decision making in labor standards enforcement agencies (LSEAs), as they relate to undocumented workers. Drawing on 25 semistructured interviews with high-level officials in San Jose and Houston, I find that bureaucrats in both cities routinely evade the issue of immigration status during the claims-making process, and directly challenge employers’ attempts to use the undocumented status of their workers to deflect liability. Respondents offer three institutionalized narratives for this approach: (1) to deter employer demand for undocumented labor, (2) the conviction that the protection of undocumented workers is essential to the agency’s ability to regulate industry standards for all workers, and (3) to clearly demarcate the agency’s jurisdictional boundaries to preserve institutional autonomy and scarce resources. Within this context, enforcing the rights of undocumented workers becomes simply an institutional means to an end.

Between Support and Shame: The Impacts of Workplace Violations for Immigrant Families

Abstract Purpose This study examines the conditions that lead to workplace violations for low-wage immigrant workers, and how family life shapes their decision to speak up. I also highlight how both employer abuse and the claimsmaking process can impact individuals and their families. Methodology/approach This research adopts a mixed-method approach that includes a survey of 453 low-wage workers seeking pro bono legal assistance and 115 follow-up interviews with claimants. I also conduct a five-year ethnography of both a monthly state workshop provided for injured workers and a pro bono legal aid clinic in a predominantly Latino agricultural community on the California central coast. Findings Beyond the material effects of lost income, the stress of fighting for justice can have negative emotional impacts that intersect with complex family dynamics. While families can be an important source of support and inspiration during this time, the burden of the breadwinner can also temper workers’ willingness to engage the labor standards enforcement system. Transnational obligations can further introduce a demobilizing dual frame of reference for workers who often hide their abuse from family members abroad who depend on them. Research implications Workplace abuse and the actual process of legal mobilization can have far-reaching effects on the families of low-wage immigrant workers, suggesting the need for a more holistic understanding of the claimsmaking experience. Originality/value This chapter tracks the challenges that workers face even once they have come forward to fight for their rights, and the multiple effects on families and children.

Workers, Families, and Immigration Policies

With hundreds of thousands of immigrant families forcibly separated over the last several years, and millions more living in fear of possible deportation, stakes are high as we enter discussions about immigration reform. At a time when public discourse more clearly recognizes the presence of women and children in the immigrant community, this chapter aims to shed light on how immigration policies andenforcement practices affect immigrants and their families.