Making requests: Filipina/o and Latina/o immigrant claims-making and racialization

Abstract

Advocacy organizations have reframed immigrants as deserving, and improved their access to services and support; yet, we know little about how low-income immigrants understand organizational frames to make individual requests in public institutions and programmes. Analyzing in-depth interviews and fieldwork over multiple years, we show how Filipina/o and Latina/o immigrants become empowered to make claims through an organization's frame of low-income residents as rightful community members in San Francisco–a self-declared “sanctuary” city where residents have formal access and protections regardless of immigrant or legal status. However, despite newfound confidence and rights awareness, Latina/o participants continually anticipate racialized treatment where others construct them as inferior and illegitimate, which depresses their claims-making. In contrast, Filipina/o participants felt othered in public programmes and institutions, but not blocked by feelings of mistreatment and illegitimacy. We push for attention to how racialization differentially operates for immigrant groups and affects the claims-making process.