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Immigrant Farmworker Advocacy: The Dynamics of Organizing

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Polity

Abstract

This paper explores contemporary labor rights advocacy among Latino farmworkers and their allies in New York state, drawing on data from participant observation and field interviews conducted over nearly a decade (from 2000 to 2008). The principal finding is that power inequalities within advocacy networks constrain the actions of “weaker” members, who, in turn, respond with unconventional tactics of resistance within the networks themselves. This paper employs key mechanisms from the literature on transnational advocacy to explain these domestic-level interactions, demonstrating their portability from one level of analysis to another.

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Notes

  1. Mark Anner, “The International Trade Union Campaign for Core Labor Standards in the WTO,” Working U.S.A.: The Journal of Labor and Society 45 (2001): 46–63; Mark Anner and Peter Evans, “Building Bridges across a Double-Divide: Alliances between U.S. and Latin American Labor and NGOs,” Development in Practice 14 (2004): 34–47; Joe Bandy and Jackie Smith, eds., Coalitions across Borders: Transnational Protest and the Neoliberal Order (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Andrew Ross, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor (New York: New Press, 2004); Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  2. In a further effort to bridge international, comparative, and Latin American politics with “American” politics, we opt for “U.S.” as an adjective as opposed to “American” in light of the fact that the United States is just one country in the Americas.

  3. Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, Globalization from Below: The Power of Solidarity (Boston: South End Press, 2000); Rachael Kamel and Anya Hoffman, The Maquiladora Reader: Cross-Border Organizing Since NAFTA (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 2002); Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (New York: Verso, 1997).

  4. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  5. Margaret Levi, “Organizing Power: Prospects for the American Labor Movement,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (March 2003): 45–68.

  6. The Ford Foundation, Close to Home: Case Studies of Human Rights Work in the United States (New York: Ford Foundation, 2004). Available electronically via: http://www.fordfound.org/pdfs/impact/close_to_home.pdf.

  7. Kate Bronfenbrenner, Sheldon Friedman, Richard W. Hurd, Rudolph A. Oswald, and Ronald L. Seeber, eds., Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); Ruth Milkman, ed., Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000); Victor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León, eds., New Destinations of Mexican Immigration in the United States: Community Formation, Local Responses and Inter-Group Relations (New York: Russell Sage, 2005); Sarumathi Jayaraman and Immanuel Ness, New Urban Immigrant Workforce: Innovative Models for Labor Organizing (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005).

  8. Peter Kwong, Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor (New York: The New Press, 1997); Jennifer Gordon, Suburban Sweatshops (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Immanuel Ness, Immigrants, Unions, and the New U.S. Labor Market (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005); Janice Fine, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities on the Edge of the Dream (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

  9. We adopt Keck and Sikkink's definition of campaigns as “sets of strategically linked activities in which members of diffuse principled networks develop explicit, visible ties and mutually recognized roles toward a common goal (generally a common target).” Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, “Transnational Advocacy Networks in the Movement Society,” in The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century, ed. David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 228.

  10. Shareen Hertel, Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

  11. We adopt Elster's definition of mechanisms as “frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns … which allow us to explain, but not predict” events. Jon Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 24, 26. For additional discussion of mechanisms in social science theory see Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism; Albert S. Yee, “The Causal Effects of Ideas on Politics,” International Organization 50 (1996): 69–108.

  12. Lester M. Salamon and S. Wojciech Sokolowski, and Associates, eds., Global Civil Society, Volume 2 (Brookfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2004).

  13. Philip Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The Domestic Sources of International Policymaking,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978): 881–912.

  14. Robert Putnam, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988): 427–60.

  15. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 13.

  16. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism; Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion.

  17. Ethel Brooks, Unraveling the Garment Industry: Transnational Organizing and Women's Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).

  18. Hans Peter Schmitz, Transnational Mobilization and Domestic Regime Change: Africa in Comparative Perspective (New York: Palgrave, 2006).

  19. Anne Marie Clark, Elisabeth J. Friedman, and Kathryn Hochstetler, “The Sovereign Limits of Global Civil Society: A Comparison of NGO Participation in Global UN Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and Women,” World Politics 51 (October 1998): 1–35.

  20. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003); Jackie Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

  21. Lisa Jordan and Peter Van Tuijl, “Political Responsibility in Transnational NGO Advocacy,” World Development 28 (December 2000): 2051–65; Gay Seidman, Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007); Sanjeev Khagram, James V. Riker, and Kathryn Sikkink, Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

  22. When discussing the specifics of this case, the terms advocates and JFW partners are used interchangeably. For the purposes of this paper, the term “advocate” does not apply to CITA, which is a grassroots organization. However, we do consider CITA part of the advocacy network. It is worth pointing out that the terms “advocacy” and “advocate” are not unproblematic. See Elizabeth J. Reid, “Understanding the Word ‘Advocacy’: Context and Use,” in Structuring the Inquiry into Advocacy, Volume 1, ed. Reid (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2000). The nuances of defining advocacy have largely been overlooked by the international relations literature on transnational advocacy.

  23. McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention; Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

  24. Hertel, Unexpected Power.

  25. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: The Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

  26. We adopt Katzenstein's definition of norms as “collective expectations for the proper behavior of actors with a given identity,” and note his argument that “in some situations, norms operate like rules that define the identity of an actor, thus having ‘constitutive effects’ that specify what actions will cause relevant others to recognize a particular identity.” Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 5. Although Hertel's work on mechanisms has tended to focus on the legal aspects of norms and related discursive aspects of campaign evolution, we focus in this paper on the behavioral aspects of norms—specifically, their function in regulating communication and interaction among the members of the networks analyzed here.

  27. Nicholas DeGenova, Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and “Illegality” in Mexican Chicago (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Juan Poblete, “Transnational Dialogues on Globalization and the Intersections of Latina/o—Chicana/o—Latin American(s) Studies,” Latin American Studies Association Forum 37 (2006): 9; William I. Robinson, “Why the Immigrant Rights Struggle Compels Us to Reconceptualize Both Latin American and Latino/a Studies,” Latin American Studies Association Forum 38 (2007): 21–23; Lynn Stephen, “Some Thoughts on Concepts to Cut across Latino/Latin American/Chicano Studies,” Latin American Studies Association Forum 37 (2006): 10–12; Joanna B. Swanger, “Labor in the Americas: Surviving in a World of Shifting Boundaries,” Latin American Research Review 38 (2003): 147–66; George Yúdice, “Linking Citizenship and Transnationalism to the Movement for an Equitable Global Economy,” Latin American Studies Association Forum 37 (2006): 15–17.

  28. Donald Barr, Liberalism to the Test: African-American Migrant Farmworkers and the State of New York (Albany: State University of New York, New York State African American Institute, 1988), 41; Patrick H. Mooney and Theo J. Majka, Farmers’ and Farmworkers’ Movements: Social Protest in American Agriculture (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995); Dorothy Nelkin, On the Season: Aspects of the Migrant Labor System (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970), 1; Oxfam America, Like Machines in the Fields: Workers without Rights in American Agriculture (Boston: Oxfam American, 2004).

  29. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA), also known as the Wagner Act, was created to address unfair labor practices. This federal law gives most private sector workers the right to form unions, collectively bargain, and strike. Furthermore, it obliges employers to recognize and bargain with certified unions. Farmworkers, domestic workers, and others, however, are excluded from the protections of the act. For more information, see Michael Evan Gold, An Introduction to Labor Law, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

  30. New York State Consolidated Laws, Chapter 31 Labor laws: Article 7 §212 Drinking water for farm laborers. Article 7 General Provisions §212-D Field sanitation for farm hand workers, farm field workers and farm food-processing workers. Article 19-A Minimum wage standards and protective labor practices for farm workers §673[2] Minimum wage and §674 Regulations.

  31. Supporters include labor, religious, community, student, and nonprofit organizations. In 2004, more than 200 such organizations endorsed the campaign. Examples include New York State AFL-CIO, New York State United Teachers, 1199 SEIU, CSEA Capital Region, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM Local 2741), United Steelworkers of America Local 1000 (Corning), New York State Catholic Conference, New York State Conference of the United Church of Christ, Capital Area Baptist Association and the Mid-Hudson Association of the American Baptists, Episcopal Diocese of New York, Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, BOCES Geneseo Migrant Center (Mt. Morris), Mid-Hudson Coalition for Economic Justice, New York Civil Liberties Union (Capital Region Chapter), Bard College Migrant Labor Project, Farmworkers Advocacy Coalition (Cornell University), and Student Action With Farmworkers (Duke University).

  32. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, “Disruptive Dissensus: People and Power in the Industrial Age,” in Reflections on Community Organization: Enduring Themes and Critical Issues, ed. J. Rothman (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc., 1998), 168.

  33. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990), xiii.

  34. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008. Some interviews were conducted in Spanish by Margaret Gray. Recordings of the interviews were translated by Margaret Gray and Diana Vazquez.

  35. Aspacio Alcántara, interview by Margaret Gray, Albion, NY, 26 June 2003.

  36. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  37. Margaret Gray, “Harvesting Expectations: Farmworker Advocacy in New York,” Ph.D. Dissertation, City University of New York, 2006. See also Leo R. Chavez, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (New York: Hartcourt Brace College Publishers, 1992).

  38. Steve Jenkins, “Organizing, Advocacy, and Member Power,” Working U.S.A.: The Journal of Labor and Society 6 (2002): 62.

  39. The list of JFW's powerful allies, for example, includes Denis Hughes, President of the New York State AFL-CIO; Bishop Hubbard of the Albany Catholic Diocese; Archdeacon Michael Kendall of the New York City Episcopal Diocese; Michael Aronson, Editor of the New York Daily News (which won a George Polk Award for its 1999 editorials on New York farmworkers); Arturo Rodriguez, President of the United Farmworker Union (UFW); Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Programs Director for the César E. Chávez Foundation, granddaughter of César Chávez; and Dolores Huerta, President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, formerly of the UFW, and a national figure in farmworker advocacy.

  40. Daniel Carroll, Ruth M. Samardick, Scott Bernard, Susan Gabbard, and Trish Hernandez, “Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey” (NAWS) 2001–2002: A demographic and employment profile of United State farmworkers. Research Report No. 9. (Washington DC: U.S. Department of Labor Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy Office of Programmatic Policy, 2005).

  41. Hertel, Unexpected Power.

  42. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  43. Event planner and dinner committee member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 3 August 2003.

  44. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.

  45. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 14 July 2005.

  46. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 26 June 2008.

  47. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray, New York City, 11 June 2008.

  48. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  49. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 3 July 2008.

  50. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 26 June 2008.

  51. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  52. Richard Witt, interview by Margaret Gray, Poughkeepsie, NY, 14 September 2007.

  53. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  54. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray, New York City, 11 June 2008.

  55. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  56. Aspacio Alcántara, interview by Margaret Gray, Albion, NY, 26 June 2003.

  57. J. Craig Jenkins, “Social Movement Philanthropy and the Growth of Nonprofit Political Advocacy: Scope, Legitimacy and Impact,” in Exploring Organizations and Advocacy: Strategies and Finances, issue 1, ed. Elizabeth J. Reid and Maria D. Montilla (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2001), 51–66.

  58. Winne Hu, “Onward to Albany in the Footsteps of Chavez,” New York Times, 3 May 2003, B1-2.

  59. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  60. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray, New York City, 11 June 2008.

  61. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  62. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 26 June 2008.

  63. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray, New York City, 11 June 2008.

  64. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  65. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 1 July 2008.

  66. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  67. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  68. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 3 July 2008.

  69. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 26 June 2008.

  70. Richard Witt, interview by Margaret Gray, Poughkeepsie, NY, 14 September 2007.

  71. Former RMM staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 30 June 2008.

  72. Jim Schmidt, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 3 July 2008.

  73. Aspacio Alcántara, interview by Margaret Gray, Albion, NY, 26 June 2003.

  74. New York State Legislature 2005 proposed bills A1993A (DelMonte) and S5887 (Flanagan) to amend SS161, 679 & 564, Lab L.

  75. Hertel, Unexpected Power, 24–29.

  76. Hertel, Unexpected Power, 27–28.

  77. Hertel, Unexpected Power, 26.

  78. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.

  79. Hertel, Unexpected Power.

  80. Former CITA staff member, interview by Margaret Gray by telephone, 14 July 2005; Richard Witt, interview by Margaret Gray, Poughkeepsie, NY, 10 September 2003. Also described in a paper by Aspacio Alcántara in CITA's newsletter “CITA en la Lucha” 3(1) 1999.

  81. This was not the first or last farmworkers congress, but one of the few that represented farmworkers from all over the state.

  82. For example, David Brooks and Jonathan Fox, eds., Cross-Border Dialogues: U.S.-Mexico Social Movement Networking (San Diego: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California-San Diego, 2002); Scott, Weapons of the Weak; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).

  83. See Barr, “Liberalism to the Test: African-American Migrant Farmworkers and the State of New York,” Grant Task Force, “Final Report: Agricultural Labor Markets in New York State and Implications for Labor Policy” (Ithaca, NY: New York State College at Cornell University, 1991); Thomas R. Maloney and David C. Grusenmeyer, Survey of Hispanic Dairy Workers in New York State. Research Bulletin 2005–02 (Ithaca, NY: Department of Applied Economics and Management, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, 2005); Nelkin, On the Season; New York State Senate-Assembly Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, “Separate & Unequal: New York's Farmworkers” (Albany: New York State Senate-Assembly Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, Joint Temporary Task Force on Farmworker Issues, 1995); Max J. Pfeffer and Pilar A. Parra, Immigrants and the Community: Integrating the Needs of Immigrant Workers and Rural Communities (Ithaca, NY: Rural New York Initiative Policy Brief Series, Department of Developmental Sociology, Cornell University, 2004).

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The authors thank Andrew Polsky and the anonymous reviewers of Polity for helpful comments on an earlier draft. We also gratefully acknowledge Betty Garcia-Mathewson for her critical insights on power.

Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).

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Gray, M., Hertel, S. Immigrant Farmworker Advocacy: The Dynamics of Organizing. Polity 41, 409–435 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.10

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