Building political agency and movement leadership: the grassroots organizing model of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates

Abstract

Drawing upon a qualitative case study of Asian Immigrant Women Advocates (AIWA), which organizes Chinese immigrant women working in low-paid, precarious jobs, this study examines how one worker center contends with multiple dimensions of precarity to build political agency and movement leadership. By encouraging participation in collective trainings, promoting involvement in collective action campaigns, and creating organizational leadership roles, AIWA has developed a grassroots organizing model that transforms Asian immigrant women workers’ everyday lives from a pervasive state of social isolation and political withdrawal to an uplifted state of self-activity and collective change-making. Key outcomes generated by AIWA’s grassroots organizing model include enhanced self-confidence, expanded social networks, practical organizing skills, and expert-level knowledge. By showing how grassroots organizing strategies create alternative pathways for social and political engagement, this study challenges the dominance of professionally led worker centers that seek to dismantle but often perpetuate the exclusionary dynamics of liberal citizenship regimes.

Keywords:

• Agency
• grassroots organizing
• social movement leadership
• worker centers
• Chinese immigrant women workers

Acknowledgments

The author is tremendously grateful to the AIWA leaders who generously contributed their time and insights toward this research study and to Young Shin for her unwavering commitment and and support for the project. The author sincerely thanks Marcel Paret and Shannon Gleeson, the special issue editors, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments throughout the process. In addition, the author is thankful to George Lipsitz, Ju Hui Judy Han, Cynthia Cranford, and Justin Kong as well as the faculty and students in the Department of Sociology at SUNY Buffalo and Brooklyn College; University of California Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Societal Issues; University of California Santa Barbara’s Center for New Racial Studies; Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Global Workers’ Rights, and the members of the Workers’ Action Centre in Toronto, Canada, and the Labor Now network in Tokyo, Japan, for providing helpful comments and suggestions on previous drafts and presentations. All opinions and errors in the manuscript are, of course, the author’s alone.

Notes

1. Josh Eidelson used the term ‘alt-labor’ in his 29 January 2013 American Prospect article, and the term has gained resonance since in popular news outlets and in worker center and union circles. See http://workercenters.com/labors-loophole/alt-labor/.

2. http://www.aiwa.org/ctos/.

3. Research assistants, Sarah Eunkyung Chee and Julia Lin, inputted survey data into SPSS, and Kwon.

4. According to the 2011 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income of the 2237 Asian origin households in Oakland Chinatown was $24,508, in comparison with Alameda county’s average of $70,821. The proportion of rental occupancy versus owner-occupied housing also reflected disparities in 2011, with 72.2% of housing consisting renter-occupied housing in Oakland’s Chinatown, in comparison with 45% in Alameda county.