Mobilizing Immigrant Worker Rights through Deferred Action

• In Event: Regulation and Precarious Work

Abstract

Legal mobilization for immigrant workers has long been contested terrain and its emphasis on impact litigation considered antithetical to rights-based struggles that question the institutional boundaries of the law. This paper examines how an enforcement-based frame to immigrant worker rights has invited a novel policy opening to help unauthorized workers mobilize their rights through bureaucratic opportunities. We focus on the case study of Labor Based Deferred Action, also known as Deferred Action for Labor Enforcement (DALE), a short-lived policy that married immigration policies and workplace regulation in the United States. Through 120 interviews with immigrant and labor advocate organizations around the United States and policy professionals based in Washington DC, we outline how the previously bifurcated fields of labor and immigration law were brought together in this short-lived policy experiment – through the building of network ties, the expansion of organizational boundaries, and innovative techniques of co-enforcement.

Authors

• Youbin Kang, City College of New York

• Shannon Marie Gleeson, Cornell University

• Kati L. Griffith, Cornell University