Hello! I am looking for someone to write an essay about immigration and citizenship. I have under this paragraph tons of information that can be included. I would go through it all to get an idea together for what to write about. Each week has it’s own rundown and a file attached that is the source/reading used to make the disscussion that week. As for sources it looks like I do not need any outside sources. Just use the readings as the sources. Its okay if you dont use all the information or readings but do try to use some different ones. Any questions just feel free to ask!
(Over the semester, we have examined some of the major problems facing Latino immigrant workers in the United States. The problems that originate from immigration, legalization, naturalization status, employment regulation, and labor union organizing, are just a few of the issues workers navigate.
In a well-written essay of at least four pages, that engages with the assigned course readings, identify the current circumstances of Latino workers in the United States and what needs to be done to better their condition. What are some reasonable (and possible) alternatives to the current situation faced by Latino workers?
Essay Page Format: Font – .12 New Times Roman / Spacing – 1.5) – teacher discription
Before we start our discussion, I want to briefly introduce our course. Immigration, (in a broad sense) is a highly contentious theme that has always been present in American political, social, and economic life. Immigration policies and how they are perceived in the broader social impacts, directly and indirectly, on our national and local economies, as well as the social, political, and cultural formation of our society, past, present, and future. That said, before we begin to explore the role of Latino workers in the United States, we will look at some of the broader issues that shape and define the current debate regarding immigration in the United States, such as different methods of analysis, which, not surprisingly offer conflicting narratives and outcomes. I would argue that given the expansive and encompassing quality of how immigration influences many different aspects of society, no single academic discipline can provide a comprehensive portrait of the problem. In this sense, we will draw on multiple perspectives, from different disciplines.
We begin our examination by exploring the multiple ways in which economic studies contribute to the debate on immigration. Economics is a particularly important component of our course, since our primary focus is the role of Latino workers, and the way immigration defines work. In this sense, immigration is central to the broader discussion of economic development, workers’ rights, industry, wages, employment, unemployment, and the social safety net (or the lack thereof). However, as we will see, economic analysis provides only a partial aspect of the debate.
In this week’s text, Economics Aspects of Migration, Phillip Martin begins his analysis by asking a question that has informed many immigration studies: “Why, do some individuals and families choose to migrate, including over national borders, while others do not.?”[i] (p. 90) The decision to migrate, according to Martin, impacts both the society left behind, as much as the country chosen to reside. He points out that economists base their analysis on a rational, highly individualized choice: “…economists assume that individuals survey the options available to them and choose where to live and work, and they choose the combination of money from work and the leisure time that maximizes their wellbeing.” (p.90) Martins ́ analysis provides a review of the different methods used by economists to measure the impact of immigration on the labor market, wages, and the economy in general. Most economic studies he identifies are cost-benefit studies that identify the advantages and implications of immigration to the United States, focusing on the question: do the benefits of immigration outweigh the costs? This question undergirds many policy initiatives over time.
One method, Martin identifies, focuses on the macroeconomic effects of immigration. He argues that macroeconomic studies tend to conclude that: “Immigration increases the labor force, and the standard static or short-run analysis of the economic impacts of migrants on resident workers assumes that employment raises, and wages fall in the larger economy after immigration.” (p.93) They argue that immigration is correlated to the decline in wages, which is beneficial for employers, it increases profits and the accumulation of wealth while reinforcing overall income inequality. In the logic of macroeconomic analysis, immigration makes an important contribution that reinforces the national economy since “adding immigrants to the labor force expands GDP [Gross Domestic Product] by slightly lowering wages and increasing returns to capital…” (p.96) I would question, however, to what extent does immigration lead to the decline in wages, if at all. It is undeniable that immigration does impact the labor force in many ways, wages included, but I would argue that the overall decline in wages is much more the effect of the type of capitalist development that has been adopted, and that immigration is only a small part of the overall equation.
The second method of analysis draws on the use of case studies, which provide insight into how immigration impacts specific industries and their labor markets, or regions of the United States. Martin argued that: “Case studies, are often cited by policymakers because the composition of the workforce in a particular industry can change in a visible way.” (p.96) However, as he points out, depending on the industry, location, and specific economic conditions, at any given time, the outcomes provided by case studies can vary drastically. In this the way, case studies offer a limited view of the socioeconomic and political impacts of immigration, and, as he argues, “…may exaggerate the negative and positive effects of migrants because it is very hard to estimate the counterfactual of what would happen without immigration.” (p.100). In contrast, the third type of analysis that is used to measure the impact of immigration provides a very different outcome. Martin points out that, econometric studies, which examine the influence of immigration on wages, employment, and unemployment rates “…did not find the adverse effects of immigrants on US workers that were expected.” (p.100).
A fourth analytical perspective is the study of economic mobility, which examines how the economic conditions of newly arriving immigrants change over time. The primary focus of this method constructs a framework for measuring how the economic conditions of immigrant workers change, compared to the conditions of resident workers, providing a view of how immigrant workers integrate into the broader economy. Probably one of the most contentious types of economic study focuses on the effects of immigration on public finance and is one of the most contested methods of analysis. The study of the impact of immigration on public finances has many times been misconstrued and unfortunately led to reinforcing myths and misconceptions about the contribution immigrant workers provide. One constraint of this type of analysis, as Martin correctly points out, is that a correct measure of the contributions and public expenses of immigrant workers to the national economy is not a simple task, “Since it is difficult to isolate the taxes paid by immigrants to cover the cost of public services they use, including schools, welfare benefits, and healthcare.” (p.105). The implications of how public finance-based arguments are used to manipulate and redefine broader social policy is the topic of a future class discussion. A final economic explanation of how immigration and immigrant workers impact society, identified by Martin, is the notion (or myth) of immigrant workers as “entrepreneurs”. In this methodological perspective, high levels of self-employment among the immigrant population are attributed to high levels of individual entrepreneurship. For the most part, this argument is grounded on a behavioral analysis that attempts to draw correlations and attribute individual actions to group behavior. Martin correctly questions the essential problem with attempting to attribute entrepreneurship as a group behavior by asking, “Does self-employment reflect entrepreneurial behavior or failure to find a “regular” job?” (p.108) And I would add, a job that offers decent pay and working conditions?
Week Two – How Migration Regulates Labor Markets – A Framework – Part I
Our discussion this week will continue to look at the issue of migration, in a broad sense, however, we will begin to focus specifically on the relation between immigration and the labor market. I realize that this week’s reading is a bit dense, but it is extremely important to set the parameters for our future discussion. The relation between immigration and labor, as many scholars argue, is a central factor of both national and international economic activity of nations, but it is also a fundamental aspect of a broader more comprehensive struggle for the collective wellbeing of all workers, comprised of social, cultural, and political processes that influence different aspects of the prevailing political and social order. The challenges presented by the interrelation of immigration and labor do not simply impact the economy, the issues are vaster and more complex. (p.16)[i] Harald Bauder argued that immigration “… is not a one-way street, where migration regulates labor markets and labor markets do not influence migration pattern. Rather, migration flows regulate labor markets and labor markets regulate migration flows…and the myth that labor markets [and economic processes for that matter] self-regulate through the wage mechanism” because political and social processes are essential components of the labor market’s structure and organization. (p.15 -16)
Bauder ́s explanation of labor migration focuses on the segmentation of market relations and the mobility of workers that stems from this process. A central part of his argument views labor as a variable factor of the overall economic process, as he explained:
“Labor is variable because workers can be hired and fired in response to business cycles. The means of production, on the other hand, are constant because they constitute a fixed investment and stay idle in periods of economic slowdown. Segmentation theory with the premise that the idleness of machinery and the fixed investments can be prevented or reduced by dividing production into segments.” (pp.19-20)
Migration, Bauder argued, is a regulatory factor of the two segments, where technology, is “capital intensive” with a high level of investments, and a second segment, which is “labor intensive”, where low investment in machinery occurs. However, as he points out, segmentation theory, as an account, although helpful, is limited, because “Neither primary nor secondary labor market segments are as homogeneous as dual segmentation theory implies…. [with] an enormous range of wages, working conditions and opportunity for upward mobility exists.” (p.20)
A second, but equally important aspect of this discussion, is the use of labor market segmentation to divide and weaken working-class demands on capital, thus providing the political wherewithal to attack and subsequently weaken the social safety net. Bauder argued: The segmentation of the labor market has also been interpreted as a divide and conquer strategy and an effort of capital to undermine the unity of labor, increase the competition between workers, and erode the welfare state” (p.21) Weakening any attempt at class solidarity is further enhanced by the fact that many immigrant workers are ineligible for social welfare benefits, where multiple visa restrictions and varying work classifications place them in a tenuous legal position at best. The lack of rights and protections makes immigrant workers easy prey for unscrupulous employers and vulnerable to exploitive demands at work.
Most policies, however, Bauder argues, are a combination of legal, and regulatory measures that have impacted negatively on the lives of immigrant workers. “In the United States,” he argued, “for example, the Clinton administration’s Operation Gatekeeper accelerated the criminalization of Mexican immigrants, rendering large numbers of international immigrants “illegal” and thereby increasing their vulnerability as workers.” (p.24) In this sense, many times, immigration policies, rather than protect workers, have had a reverse effect, making them more vulnerable in the labor market, a measure designed to benefit employers. Employers, organized labor, social movements, and the state all have a stake in setting immigration policy, which can be inclusionary and exclusionary. In this way, immigration policies are used as a means of regulating who is protected, and a means of attracting and providing easy entry for some populations and constraining others. Among the many ways that these measures are applied is by awarding citizenship, which as Bauder argues, is used to include, or exclude migrant workers, and is an intricate part of labor market regulation and policies. “At the national scale,” he stated, “citizenship policies are domestic labor market policies. Citizenship is a way of organizing the labor market by delineating the level of access workers receive to the labor market. Non-citizens are either excluded from the labor market altogether or their participation is tightly controlled, often guiding them to the secondary segment of the informal market.” (p.26) At the same time, the use of citizenship can facilitate access to business executives and highly trained professionals. From an international perspective, citizenship is a means of regulating and constraining the movement of workers across borders. (p.28) As we will see in the upcoming weeks, however, this is not to say that immigrant workers do not fight back against the abusive policies and conditions that they are imposed.
How Migration Regulates Labor Markets (1).pdf
Week Three – How Migration Regulates Labor Markets – Capital and Distinction -Part II
This week we will continue the major themes that inform the juncture of the labor market, immigration, and how these issues shape contemporary society. As Bauder points out: “Recent scholarship on the segmentation of immigrant labor has begun treating labor markets as a multidimensional process involving the interaction of economics, social, and cultural practices.” (p.35) These distinct categories, where immigrant labor gain greater or lesser expression are not independent of each other nor are they static. As we discussed last week, capital is central to understanding how labor markets operate and more importantly how immigrant workers are either included or excluded and the role of immigrant workers in the workforce. The author draws on Pierre Bourdieu ́s contributions to understanding the multiple expressions of capital as illustrative of the juncture point of immigration and labor. As he argued: “For Bourdieu, capital is about social reproduction. In this respect, citizenship, and other social and cultural processes of distinction – as processes of social reproduction – link to international migration and the social regulation of labor markets.” (p.35) In this sense, capital is understood not simply as an economic category, but as a social and cultural classification that informs and reproduces the labor process and the structure of class inequality.
Understanding how the multiple expressions of capital interact, help illustrate how power and domination, elite, i.e., corporate power, are consolidated and shape the day-to-day lives of workers. “This perspective” Bauder argues, “of capital as a means of domination permits its applications to a range of social, cultural, and institutional processes. Capital thus not only exists in the realm of production but also in the realm of social reproduction…[however] the process associated with the circulation, valorization, and devaluation of capital are not concealed by mysterious market forces or a hidden logic of “the economy”. (p.36) Thus the focus of the process is the result of human agency, where people (i.e., social classes) working within the prevailing institutional structure act to impose their individual and collective interests. (p.36)
Capital, in this context, is further organized in well-defined categories, that correlate in the social, economic, cultural, and political spheres of society, regulating and constraining the boundaries of socioeconomic mobility. In this sense, the fundamental question of a democratic political and social order which seeks to answer, “who gets what and when do they get it”, while not entirely restricted (we do not live in a caste system) is highly limited. Bauder argues “although rigid these boundaries are not etched in stone. The actions of individual, social groups, and institutions can rupture, move, and redraw the boundaries.” (p.37)
The distinction between different forms of capital helps to elucidate competing organized responses by immigrant and non-immigrant groups in society, such as the use of ethnic-based networks that provide important information regarding employment, housing, etc. However, as Bauder points out, “An individual form of capital does not stand on its own. Rather, the different forms of capital complement each other, and resources can be transferred from one form of capital to another.” (p.38) For example, and just as important, “social capital” is not just important for immigrant workers to navigate their adopted homeland, but as a means of expressing collective agency, and in this way influencing the dominant social structure. Understanding the different forms of capital provides underscores the different ways and to what assimilation occurs and the shifting barriers to social, political, and economic integration.
Capital and Distinction (1).pdf
Week Four – The Border Crossed Us: Transnational Class Formation
This week we are going to examine the process of class formation of migrant workers. What are the factors that contribute to the formation of a transnational working class and its impact on workers in the United States, Central, and Latin America? In a broad sense, this process is the result of the continuous US and international capital intervention seeking to destabilize the economies and state economic activity of developing nations of central and south America, a process more commonly known as neoliberal globalization. As the authors point out: “US capital initiated the process and defined the terrain in which subordinate states would have to adjust accordingly to have access within the new model, while also invoking the crystallization of likeminded counterparts internationally.” This process was contingent on the imposition of new rules and the deregulation of the national economies. To be successful US capital required US-trained political and economic elites that would represent their interests locally, what the authors define as “the inner circle – whose collective outlook is generated from a unique structural level…” intertwining public and private institutions. In this sense, one important aspect of the process of transnational class formation is the reproduction of elite classes, which are small groups of politically powerful billionaires.
In contrast, for workers in Mexico, Central America, and the United States, neoliberal globalization, and the declining power of the state to regulate their economies sent workers into long-term economic misery. As the authors point out: “After three decades of capitalist restructuring and the imposition of NAFTA, 53 percent of the population [in Mexico] lives below the poverty line and an estimated 60 percent of the population works in the informal sector.” Besides the increase in abject poverty, in most cases, this process is also a result of the direct attack and decline of labor organizations, i.e., unions. To guarantee its success the neoliberal political and economic order required containing labor militancy and the ability of workers to resist the imposition of capital. As Chacón argued, “The state set out to break the extant form of independent labor unions” and in many cases replace them with company-controlled unions. In many ways, this process draws on the historical effects of uneven capitalist development and the outright imperialist intervention of the United States. As a result, in the case of Mexico, “The transnationalization of the Mexican working class has produced two forms of super-exploited labor: as workers in their own country oppressed by foreign capital that works with the Mexican state to constrain and suppress labor unionism and as displaced migrant labor that is criminalized once it crosses into the United States.” The neoliberal “reorganization of the state” in Mexico, Central and South America, was also driven by international economic organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, that demanded, in exchange for financial support, the implementation of austerity programs, which included the privatization of public benefits and state enterprises driving workers even further into poverty and despair.
The Border Crossed Us Transnational Class Formation (1).pdf
Week Five – How the other half works.
Last week we examined migration as a process of transnational class formation that influences the lives of workers and the organization of work locally and internationally. But the relationship between migration and labor is not unsystematic. Labor migration develops through multiple networks where workers engage with employers and institutions, directly and indirectly, as well as formally and informally. Labor-driven migration is a system and understanding the basic characteristics of how that system works is essential to a broader comprehension of the role of labor in society and how employers and political elites draw on social networks to supply the labor force.
The authors argue that multiple reasons help understand how and why the social organization of migrant labor is structured, such as:
- “Networks serve as conduits of information…”
- “…Social connections function as instruments of influence”
- “Social ties can be used to enforce obligations…”
- “…Networks, [act] as carriers of both information and obligation”
(See page 83)
As a result of the exchange between new and old migrant workers, relations develop that “provide a matrix in which movement and settlement take place.” (p.83) The networks of immigrant labor cross national borders and are construed on already existent relationships that are not based solely on the decision to migrate, and while economic issues are a driving factor, they are not the only factor. There are divergences in the way we understand how networks of labor organize and influence migrant labor. (p.85) As the authors argue, “migration networks function as “personal information fields” expanding the quantity and quality of information available to newcomers and simultaneously confining them to the options accessible through the necessarily circumscribed ties.” (p.86) This process is likewise shaped by social closure, a process by which “low-skilled migrants, burdened with disadvantages, manage to steadily expand their employment base, first horizontally, then vertically.” (p.87) Some sociologists argue that migration networks are an indication of social capital, understood as the administration of sparse resources based on their location in the community and the broader social structure. Networks are beneficial to limited groups of migrant workers and are also beneficial to employers, by linking immigrant labor to institutions that help shape the broader process of social organization, connecting workers, employers, and communities.
But networks do not function effectively on their own, as the authors argue, “Success occurs only when the employers’ informational needs are met in fact by the intelligence provided through the referral network.” (pp.91-92) But it is important to remember that the information provided is based on interests that are not unbiased. (p.92) Both company bureaucracies and the bureaucratic structures of employment, such as labor regulations, and workplace anti-discrimination legislation likewise influence how migrant labor networks inform working-class life. Bureaucracies, in this sense, help to formalize the migrant labor force, providing a limited level of fairness and equal access to employment and resources. The basic phases of this process are recruitment and screening.
In a broad sense, networks are loosely organized relationships embedded within the economic structure that not only shape immigrant employment opportunities but ultimately how workers and employers engage at work and in the community. But it is important to acknowledge that they also serve to constrain and limit the demands of resources workers have access to at any given time.
How the Other Half Works Networks burocracy and exclusion (1).pdf
Week Six – The Border Crossed Us: The North American Model of Labor Exploitation
This week we will examine the characteristics and impact of labor exploitation and migration in the United States and Mexico. Labor migration is a direct result of capitalist economic reorganization enacted and continually renewed by regional and international economic agreements. These agreements favored the rights of capital, allowing companies and corporations to move freely across the border while severely restricting labor protections and criminalizing migrant workers. As the authors point out: “In the last three decades, the natural rights of capital have been encoded in the international agreements and enforcement agencies that define and regulate the operations of the global economy. Free markets are then aggressively promoted across national boundaries by states, transnational enterprises, and organizations, armies of enforcers and ranks of functionaries, intellectuals and consultants, and other front-line intermediaries.” (p.1) In this sense, it is essential to consider not only the rules and regulations that sustain the process of labor exploitation but the massive structure that engages state economic and political authorities that are needed to impose and guarantee the application of the rules of capitalist development. A crucial aspect of this process was the shift of significant parts of the productive process to regions where low wages and weak or non-existent labor and environmental protections were the norms.
In the United States, this process focused on the transfer of significant sectors of the manufacturing industries to the northern Mexican states that border the US. As the authors argue: “Capital export into Mexico has also … contributed to the growth of concentrated industrial clusters and population centers along the border and into the interior…this illustrates the one-dimensional form of current open borders, for capital, money, and products, which have substantially transformed the relations of production within the region.” (pp.1-2) This process undergirded the mounting deindustrialization of the United States starting in the late 1970s. While it is true that this process had a major impact on the regional productive process, I am not sure it was unique to North America, but rather a global capital initiative characterized by expanding labor exploitation through the search for low wages, fostered by the fragmentation of the productive process can be verified around the globe. It was neoliberalism’s answer in their search to increase profits. A fundamental aspect to ensure success was the creation of manufacturing supply chains of goods, on both sides of the US – Mexican border, with support logistics that sustained regional markets.
The mindset of neoliberal global economic development was very clear, as then CEO of General Electric (GE), Jack Welch stated, “Ideally, you ́d have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy.” The neoliberal transformations of the manufacturing process had a disastrous effect on workers on both sides of the US – Mexican border. In the United States workers experienced mass unemployment with the plant closings, which in turn affected working-class families and their communities. For Mexican workers, Chacón states, the North American model of labor exploitation, “destroyed and replaced local industry and has restructured economies based on creating systems of exploitation, extraction, and profit repatriation … leading to waves of out-migration corresponding to a greater influx of US capital investment and wealth transfer. Migration follows the path of theft.” (p.2) Subsequently, this process likewise required opening markets in Mexico and other countries south of the border, the infusion of capital in central and south America, which required creating (and in many cases imposing) favorable governments which were readily willing to implement the neoliberal model of privatization of the public good, low wages and little, if any, labor protections.
The system of super-exploitation of labor created the conditions for the emergence of a transnational working class and the strengthening of working-class solidarity. While capital’s objective was to divide and put US and Mexican workers in competition with each other, for the most part, workers and their unions laid the basis for greater class solidarity. The constraint of working-class organizing, despite the blatant intervention of state authorities, was unable to contain labor militancy for a prolonged period. Most of Mexico’s labor unions were known for their pro-business attitude, which as Chacón argues was a direct result of global neoliberalism’s intervention in the Mexican state. As he points out; “Several factors explain the declining rate of class struggle. Capital mobility into Mexico has been predicated on the maintenance of low wages. The Mexican neoliberal model has ground down the welfare functions of the state and has simultaneously defunded its labor enforcement.” Despite all these efforts labor militancy did find support and continues to gain greater expression in Mexico. In part, this has also been a direct effect of the radical changes in Mexican politics with the election of Andres Manuel López Obrador, and the progressive politics of the Morena Party.
The Border Crossed Us The North American Model of Labor Exploit (1).pdf
Week Seven – Not Working – Ending Welfare / The Myth of Welfare Dependency
Immigration in the United States, and Latino immigration given its scale and scope, is not just a question of labor market adjustment. The ongoing debate regarding a just immigration policy and the fair treatment of migrant workers has a far-reaching impact on a multitude of social, political, and economic policies. As the authors argue: “Welfare reform served as the “back door” to immigration reform as it widened the gap between citizens and legal immigrants, created immigrant categories entirely new to US law, and opened up new channels of surveillance and information-sharing between social service agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS).” (p.33) Sweeping changes to the welfare and immigration policies, in the United States during the 1990s, jointly, helped usher in neoliberal reforms, that privatized, and or, drastically reduced the social safety net for all workers. The logic of “free trade” buttressed the movement for reducing social services, and the anti-immigrant – nativists’ arguments, which, helped create an increasingly larger mass of low-wage workers, with little or no legal protections. “Supporters sold both NAFTA [North American Free-Trade Agreement- 1994] and PRWORA [Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act – 1996]” the authors state, “through the neoliberal logic of free trade, arguing that, lifting trade restrictions and social subsidies would elevate all workers. Yet the economic effect of both policies has hardly been elevating for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.” (p.35)
To create a favorable public opinion for the dismantling of the social welfare system, neoliberal pundits, with the support of the media, promoted the myth that social services were the object of large-scale abuse and fraud, by, in many cases, unwed, minority women, with children, which were pejoratively called “welfare queens”. This same argument would also be directed toward the Latino immigrant population. Contrary to the myth, however, most welfare recipients in the United States were (and continue to be) poor white workers. (p.50) But the myth served its purpose, helping divide working-class communities, generating public support, and consolidating the neoliberal objective of privatizing the public good. In all cases, the public debate and political process that instructed the issues of welfare and immigration were dominated by political mythology, and large-scale fraud of the public welfare system was never proven. Moreso, in many cases, since social services were administered by states, many times welfare was inaccessible to immigrant families. The anti-immigrant / anti-welfare arguments underscored capitals drive for building a large low-wage workforce which in turn helped to contain labor union organizing drives. The convergence of these policies served to consolidate what was a radical shift in economic activity starting in “the early 1970s”, the authors argue, “private divestment from manufacturing centers in the east and Midwest, coupled with the expansion of the low-wage service sector and light industry in the sunbelt profoundly transformed the US economy” (p.41) and I would add the US labor movement, which experienced a drastic decline in union membership as factories closed across the United States. Combined with this, the attack on social welfare services, through the media, advanced the interests of anti-immigrant discourse, when, “the national press also propagated the myth that welfare was a magnet for illegal immigration.” (p.55) Nothing could be farther from the truth, most immigrants were, and are in search of work.
Over the past 50 years, the combined attacks on the social safety net and immigrant workers have become cornerstones of a broader argument used to attack workers’ rights and legal protections. They cannot be understood outside of the larger process of neoliberal globalization and the ongoing shifts in the US economy. “The trend we see” the authors argue, “in the United States – the erosion of wages, benefits and working conditions, the incorporation of greater numbers of women, racial minorities and immigrants into the low-wage workforce and widening class division – are magnified at the global level as multinationals migrate freely and continuously across national borders in search of bigger profits.” (p.65)
The Myth of Welfare Dependency (1).pdf
Ending Welfare (1).pdf
Week Eight – L.A. Story – Organizing the “Unorganizable”
Our final class discussion will examine the relationship between organized labor, immigrant workers, and immigration over time. Organized labor’s response to immigration has, for the most part, been an indicator of the broader socioeconomic conditions of the US working class. However, this mutually beneficial relationship has also been nuanced by the type of labor union, industry, geographic location, and specific immigrant group. This complex relationship is informed by the political economy at any given historical period. In a general sense, the history of the US labor movement is part and parcel with the continuous influx of immigrant workers, independently of its often’ ambiguous responses to the plight of immigrant workers. As the authors point out: “…organized labor’s growth during its formative years had been predicated largely recruiting immigrants and their offspring, who made up a huge proportion of the working class in the urban and industrial regions of the country that were primary sites of union building.” (p. 118) In this sense, sporadic anti-immigrant sentiment, among a specific sector of organized labor was much more the result of their structure and industry rather than a sweeping world view of unions in the United States. Craft unions, whose membership was based on the organization of skilled workers, had as a strategy, the control and regulation of the labor market. In contrast, industrial unions, which were industry-wide unions, were, in general, more favorable to organizing the immigrant workforce. (p.120)
The introduction of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies in the 1930s and 1940s, not only reinvigorated a failing economy and spurred economic growth with the support of newly enacted labor legislation that invigorated the creation of labor union organizations, with the active support of immigrant workers that quickly integrated into society. As the authors argued: “Paradoxically, the upsurge of unionism in the 1930s and 1940s was not only a force for broad economic and social transformations but also a primary vehicle of immigrant assimilation. The economic movements won by the labor movement in this era brought foreign-born rank-and-file workers squarely into the middle-class mainstream for the first time.” (p. 121) Historically, it has been evidenced that the expansion of organized labor is an important part of the protection and success of immigrant workers and that the future and success of both are intricately connected in many ways.
This is not to say that the labor movement in its entirety has readily acknowledged the importance of organizing immigrant workers. By the 1970s and 1980s, some sectors of the labor movement upheld the myth that immigrant workers were, in large part, “unorganizable”. Or because of their legal status, economic pressures by employers, or fear of retaliation. While the myth of the unorganizable quality of immigrant labor, while largely untrue for foreign-born workers, the falsity did provide a further rationale that sustained the overall attack on labor organizing in general, reinforcing the decline in union density and power.
Particularly, after 1965 the “pseudo fact” of the unorganizable character of immigrant workers perpetuated by some sectors of organized labor and employers continued to gain traction, until the 1990s when increasingly “many organizers had come to believe that foreign-born workers, and especially Latinos, were unusually responsive to unionization efforts.” (p.128) Surveys of the period confirmed the practical experience of union organizers dispelling the myth of immigrant worker resistance to union organizing. Many Latino immigrant workers had previous experience with labor unions and readily acknowledged their importance. The role of immigrant labor, in general, and Latino labor has been an important activist component of organized labor in the United States. In a 2001-2002 survey “of California workers, 67 percent of non-union Latino workers” responded favorably to the possibility of union representation. (p.129) In this sense, the decline in union density was not the result of immigrant worker resistance to labor organizing efforts, but rather the well-orchestrated anti-union campaigns by employers sustained by historically weak labor legislation that provided little support to union organizing campaigns. When the mythology is cleared away, what is evident is that the importance of Latino workers for the success of the US labor movement is undeniable.
LA Story Organizing the Unorganizable (1).pdf