"We Are the Ones Who Are Out in Front": Women's Leadership in the Immigrant Rights Movement

Abstract

"We Are the Ones Who Are Out in Front": Women'sLeadership in the ImmigrantRightsMovement RuthMilkman and VeronicaTernquez A striking feature of the contemporary immigrant rights move ment in the United States is the extensive presence of women in formal leadership roles. Women are not only highly visible as grass roots and mid-level leaders but also as executive directors of lead ing immigrant rights organizations and in other high-level positions. In this regard, the immigrant rights movement is an anomaly, since men dominate the top leadership roles in most US social movements and the organizations linked to them.1 The immigrant rights movement is national in scope, as was revealed by the massive 2006 street marches across the nation pro testing proposed changes to US immigration law. Prominent female immigrant rights leaders can be found throughout the United States.2 We focus here on the role of female leaders in Los Angeles, where a disproportionate share of immigrant rights organizations are head quartered. Home to the nation's single largest concentration of unau thorized immigrants, southern California has the immigrant move ment's deepest base of popular support. And unlike regions with more diverse foreign-born populations, the immigrant community in the Los Angeles area is highly cohesive, due to its relative linguistic homo geneity: Mexicans and Central Americans comprise the majority of the area's foreign-born population and an even greater proportion of its unauthorized immigrants.3 In recent years, moreover, Los Angeles FeministStudies38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 723 724 Ruth Milkman and Veronica Terriquez has become the nation's leading laboratory of immigrant labor orga nizing, especially among Latinos.4 The LA immigrant rights movement includes four major seg ments: (a) service-sector labor unions with substantial foreign-born memberships; (b) immigrant hometown associations (HTAs) and ethnic organizations; (c) community-based organizations (CBOs), including "worker centers" as well as umbrella organizations that func tion as coalition-builders; and (d) student immigrant rights groups.5 The nature and extent of women's leadership varies considerably among these segments, as we show below. The variation enriches our analysis, exposing the dynamics of women's leadership in the move ment as a whole. Our inquiry focuses specifically on Latinas, who pre dominate among top-level female immigrant leaders in Los Angeles. The contemporary immigrant rights movement has two key dimensions. It is a civil rights movement, seeking a path to legal status and other fundamental rights for the nation's unauthorized immi grants. But it is also a labor movement, in the broadest sense of the term, promoting economic advancement for immigrants and their children. However, women's prominence among high-level leaders in the immigrant rights movement differentiates it from other US civil rights and labor movements, in which women are typically lim ited to intermediate and lower level positions while men monopolize the top leadership roles.6 In earlier Latino movements, similarly, men comprised the overwhelming majority of high-level leaders, as for example in the United Farm Workers and the Chicano movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Why is the immigrant rights movement different? We propose a three-pronged explanation. First, an ample supplyof female leaders has been generated by the migration process itself—which, as many commentators have noted, often improves the status of female immi grants and draws them into the public sphere. Second, because the immigrant rights movement is relatively new and has grown dramat ically since the late 1980s, it has generated extensive demandfor new leadership—in the context of a late twentieth century political cul ture that is broadly supportive of gender equity. The third factor is the feminist consciousness of immigrant women leaders themselves. Although more often expressed behind closed doors than in public, feminism Ruth Milkman and Veronica Terriquez 725 has served as a vital resource for many of these women, helping them overcome obstacles along the path to leadership roles. Gender and Migration The literature on the gender dynamics of immigration from Latin America to the United States offers a starting point for our analysis. One key finding in that literature is that, despite the difficulties asso ciated with the migration process, it...