“No One Will Speak for Us”: Empowering Undocumented Immigrant Women Through Policy Advocacy

ABSTRACT

This article draws on data from an exploratory study involving an organized group of Mexican immigrant mothers engaged in community-based policy advocacy in the Pacific Northwest. Participants in the project lobbied state legislators on bills expanding the rights of undocumented immigrants—most notably, bills granting access to in-state tuition and driver’s licenses. In-depth interviews (n=12) reveal that through this process, participants came to see themselves as political subjects, despite their unauthorized legal status. Findings reveal that participants’ engagement in the policy process is centered on the idea of expressing needs and reflects their interest in improving individual, family, and community well-being. In this sense, their participation in politics flows from their roles as mothers and caregivers. By illuminating the experiences of a group—undocumented immigrant women—often overlooked in research on immigration policy and practice, this case offers a counter-narrative to the dominant portrayal of immigrant women and suggests ways to integrate community organizing and collective action into policy practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrants
• women
• empowerment
• policy practice

Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the University of Portland College of Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research Program and the Arthur Butine Faculty Development Fund.

I am deeply grateful to the participants in this study and the staff from Adelante Mujeres, as well as Oregon State Representative Joseph S. Gallegos, Ph.D., M.S.W. Special thanks also to my research assistants—Yuridia Hernández Osorio, B.S.W., for her assistance in conducting interviews, and Rebecca Tabor, B.S.W., for help with literature review and reading early drafts of this paper.

Notes

^1. For more recent discussion of individual and collective self-efficacy as relating to civic engagement, see Ohmer (2010) and Collins, Neal, and Neal (2014).

^2. Many thanks to Yuridia Hernández-Osorio for her assistance and support in conducting interviews.

^3. This research complies with all ethical requirements for human subjects and was approved by the University of Portland’s Institutional Review Board.

^4. I achieved fluency in Spanish through 15 years of study and work in Spanish-speaking communities and was certified by the State of Washington as a medical interpreter in 2004.

^5. The host organization, Adelante Mujeres, never asks participants about their immigration status.

^6. The decision to interview only the most active participants was made jointly by the researcher and the Executive Director of Adelante Mujeres, who indicated that these participants would be most inclined to speak with us about the experience, because they had remained involved and were still excited about the policy victories. These participants were also more likely to receive some benefit from the experience of being interviewed and reflecting in a systematic way on the effects of the project.

^7. Interview (Yolanda).

^8. It is beyond the scope of this article to assess the very real obstacles that Latinos and immigrants face in participating in political conversations such as those suggested here. Instead, the focus of this analysis is on how participants in the advocacy project began to see themselves as having a voice in policy and being invited into conversation with lawmakers.

^9. For more discussion of the barriers and possibilities of engaging marginalized populations in the policy process, see Lombe and Sherraden (2008), Rome et al. (2010), and Itzhaky and Bustin (2005).

^10. In drafting the legislation to grant driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, legislators created a distinction between licenses—available to those who could prove legal residence or citizenship—and driver’s cards—available to anyone else.