Mexican Hometown Associations in Chicagoacán: From Local to Transnational Civic Engagement

6. Expanding Agendas and Building Transnational Coalitions

136 I In 2011, more than a decade after the creation of the Federation of Michoacán Clubs in Illinois (FEDECMI), Casa Michoacán bustles with activity, reflecting its motto: “Opening Borders, Uniting Communities.” In February, it hosted a meeting with Linda Machuca, one of the first Ecuadoran migrants to win a seat in Ecuador’s congress representing migrants living in North America. Machuca was visiting Chicago to inform constituencies about recent constitutional amendments to recognize Ecuadorian citizenship as universal and respect the rights of all foreigners living in Ecuador. In April, Virginia Martinez, the legislative attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and a bipartisan commission of state representatives offered a course on legislative redistricting and how the new maps might affect Latino representation. Later that month, FEDECMI held a community briefing with fellow member organizations of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) to discuss a trip to Springfield to advocate for the Illinois DREAM act1 and protest against the introduction of new anti-­ immigration bills. In June, they received the archbishop of Morelia, who came to inaugurate the Presencia Michoacana in the Midwest with a community mass at El Cerrito del Tepeyac in Des Plaines, and asked him to encourage parishioners to be more engaged with immigrant legalization campaigns.2 In July, Casa Michoacán invited Electoral Federal Institute (IFE) officials from Mexico City to discuss the status of absentee ballots and staff from Michoacán’s Electoral Institute (IEM) to brainstorm on improving outreach to register Michoacanos living abroad to vote in gubernatorial elections. c h a p t e r 6 Expanding Agendas and Building Transnational Coalitions Expanding Agendas and Building Coalitions 137 Multiple Identities, Multinational Engagements As the above sample of the civic and cultural activities of hometown associations (HTAs) demonstrates, migrant engagement through Chicago’s HTAs connects local, national, transborder, and global scales. Migrant activities display multiple membership affiliations with a human rights framework that expresses several group identities: Michoacanos, Mexican citizens, Latino voters, Catholics, U.S. citizens, and Latin Americans. HTAs are not the only migrant organizations that are based on multiple and often overlapping collective identities. Other organizations that make up migrant civil society, such as independent worker centers or migrant-­ led religious congregations, function in a similar way. This fosters larger support networks but poses challenges for building coalitions and alliances with immigrants of other nationalities or second-­ generation Latino groups. While it is true that shared collective identities can reach consensus more easily on certain organizing strategies, they can also block others that conflict with their organizational goals and vision (Bada and Mendoza 2012; Barvosa-­Carter 2001; Fox and Gois 2010). Although globalization has created multifarious social attachments that span borders, there are still many obstacles preventing the participation of larger immigrant groups in successful local and cross-­ border initiatives such as block clubs, Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy partnerships, local school councils, HTAs, or transnational organization coalitions. Much of their success, or lack thereof, depends on the commitment of several institutions including governments , bureaucracies, and the nonprofit sector. In this chapter, I examine the organizational challenges, sociopolitical agendas , and scaling operations of HTAs, placing special emphasis on the evolution and expansion of their networks to build a fledgling migrant civil society across borders. In a difficult environment to attract the attention and increase the civic engagement of disadvantaged minority groups, the most important gain for this new cohort of Mexican binational migrant activists working in HTAs and other migrant-­ led membership organizations is their capacity for self-­ representation. The point of departure here is that many adult Mexican migrants are initiated into civic life in their country of origin or through projects oriented toward their country of origin. These projects are a form of migrant civic binationality that is playing a growing role as their organizations scale up and out in different geographical and thematic arenas. For many groups of Mexican migrants, civic engagement begins directly in their new Chicago neighborhoods and later is oriented toward their country of origin, or is simultaneously oriented to both countries. Decisions to become civically engaged depend on the contexts found during departure and upon arrival. Factors that encourage involvement include the presence of strong labor organizations in the workplace, access to educational opportunities, engagement with culturally active churches, more schooling prior to migration, marital status, and 138 Mexican Hometown Associations English-­ language proficiency, among...