Beyond the L.A. Model? Understanding the evolution of immigrant worker organizations through a resource-based model

• In Event: 120 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session. Barriers and Opportunities for Building A Labor Movement across Differences of Race, Gender, and Legal Status

Abstract

In this paper we provide a tentative explanation for the emergence, consolidation and fragmentation of the Los Angeles immigrant rights movement. Existing literature argues that, over the last decades, immigrant advocacy organizations have converged towards a hybrid ‘worker center’ model. It also stresses that consolidation of this model owes to the crucial supporting role of labor unions and the strong cooperation forged among organizations themselves. Through the case study of the Multi-Ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON) and its member organizations, we suggest that such model represented only a specific phase in local immigrant advocacy. More importantly, in drawing on ecological theory (Hannan and Freeman 1989; Minkoff 1997; Soule and King 2008; Vermeulen 2013), we contend that we can better understand single organizational trajectories by looking at how their strategies were shaped by changes in the surrounding resource environment. The study draws on IRS Tax Return forms, private foundation grant applications and organizational material to describe how different resources – financial, organizational and inter-organizational – have shaped dynamics of competition and cooperation between immigrant organizations over the last twenty-five years. In particular, we identify three phases: a first period of resource scarcity, fast innovation and messy cooperation; a second period of homogeneous resource increase, characterized by sustained collaboration and cooperation; a third period of unevenly distributed resource increase, characterized by growing organizational specialization and fragmentation. In constructing this explanation for the Los Angeles case, we also suggest that the model may be applicable in other US cities with similar organizational configurations.

Authors

• Davide Gnes, University of Amsterdam

• Walter Nicholls, University of California-Irvine

• Floris Vermeulen, University of Amsterdam