Results by title

Collecting the diverse perspectives of scholars, labor organizers, and human-rights advocates, Accountability across Borders is the first edited collection that connects studies of immigrant integration in host countries to accounts of transnational migrant advocacy efforts, including case studies from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Covering the role of federal, state, and local governments in both countries of origin and destinations, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), these essays range from reflections on labor solidarity among members of the United Food and Commercial Workers in Toronto to explorations of indigenous students from the Maya diaspora living in San Francisco. Case studies in Mexico also discuss the enforcement of the citizenship rights of Mexican American children and the struggle to affirm the human rights of Central American migrants in transit. As policies regarding immigration, citizenship, and enforcement are reaching a flashpoint in North America, this volume provides key insights into the new dynamics of migrant civil society as well as the scope and limitations of directives from governmental agencies.

Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States and has long been a prime destination for international migrants from Latin America, Asia, and more recently, Africa. However, the city is politically mixed, organizationally underserved, and situated in a relatively anti-immigrant state. This makes Houston a challenging context for immigrant rights despite its rapidly diversifying population.

In Advancing Immigrant Rights in Houston, Els de Graauw and Shannon Gleeson recount how local and multi-level contexts shape the creation, contestation, and implementation of immigrant rights policies and practices in the city. They examine the development of a city immigrant affairs office, interactions between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement officials, local public-private partnerships around federal immigration benefits, and collaborations between labor, immigrant rights, faith, and business leaders to combat wage theft.

The case study of Houston provides a bellwether for how other U.S. cities will deal with their growing immigrant populations and underscores the importance of public-private collaborations to advance immigrant rights.

Beyond unlivable wages and a lack of upward mobility, low-wage work in the United States is rife with danger and degrading treatment. Immigrants and people of color are overrepresented in these “bad jobs” and often feel as though they are unable to change their working conditions. In Legalized Inequalities, law scholar Kati L. Griffith, sociologist Shannon Gleeson, anthropologist Darlène Dubuisson, and political scientist Patricia Campos-Medina investigate the government’s role in perpetuating poor and dangerous work environments for low-wage immigrant workers of color.

Drawing on interviews with over three hundred low-wage Haitian and Central American workers and worker advocates, Griffith, Gleeson, Dubuisson, and Campos-Medina reveal how U.S. policies produce and sustain job instability and insecurity. Together, contemporary U.S. labor and employment law, immigration policy, and enduring racial inequality work in tandem to keep workers’ wages low, lock them into substandard working conditions, and minimize opportunities to push for change. Workplace regulations meant to protect workers are weak and underenforced, privileging employers over workers. At-will employment policies, which allow employers to terminate employees without cause, discourage workers from bargaining for better jobs or holding employers accountable for even the most egregious mistreatment. Federal immigration policy further disempowers workers by deputizing employers to act as immigration enforcement agents through immigration status verification requirements. Undocumented workers often believe they must endure maltreatment or risk deportation. Anti-immigrant sentiment—encouraged by U.S. policy—impacts workers across all status groups. Additionally, despite a proliferation of civil rights legislation, racial disparities remain in the workplace. Workers of color are often paid less, forced to complete more dangerous and demeaning tasks, and subjected to racial harassment. 
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While these workers face formidable barriers to fighting for their rights, they are not entirely powerless. Some low-wage workers filed formal complaints with government agencies. Others, on their own or collectively, confronted their employers to demand fair and dignified treatment. Some even quit in protest of their poor working conditions. The authors argue that reforming labor and employment law, immigration law, and Civil Rights law is necessary to reshape the low-wage workplace. They suggest increasing funding for workers’ rights enforcement agencies, removing the mandate for employers to verify a worker’s immigration status, and making it easier to prove that employment discrimination has occurred, among other policy proposals, to help empower and protect low-wage immigrant workers of color.

Legalized Inequalities not only highlights the crushing consequences of U.S. policy on low-wage immigrant workers of color but showcases their resilience in the face of these obstacles.