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Organizing for Migrant Women’s Workplace Rights: GCIR Program Highlights & Takeaways

Thursday, April 10, 2025

By Anduriña Espinoza-Wasil, GCIR's Programs Learning Manager

GCIR’s recent webinar "Building Worker Power for Migrant Women" did something important beyond providing valuable content and timely insights: it gave us hope. The program showcased the heroic work being done in Arkansas, California, New Jersey, and New York to safeguard the rights of migrant women workers in the agriculture and poultry industries and in the domestic work sector. In last month’s webinar, which was moderated by Carmen Randolph at Women’s Foundation of the South, we heard from local organizers at the California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc.’s (CRLA) LGBTQ+ Program; Damayan, a group that serves and empowers low-wage Filipino workers living and working in New York City and New Jersey; and Venceremos, a worker-based organization in Arkansas whose mission is to ensure the human rights of poultry workers.

migrant women hold up vital sectors of the economy, while the threat of deportation looms

"You need us." This is the message we heard from speakers in reference to the migrant women workers in their communities. Indeed, farmworkers both in agriculture and the meat industry were lauded during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic for their essential work making sure Americans continued to have food to eat. But now, in a very different political climate – one marked by increased and intensified Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids – both undocumented workers and those with authorized immigration status in these industries fear for their futures in the United States.

Gender identity adds another layer to this issue. For example, LGBTQ+ migrants who suffer abuses at work may seek justice, but with court documents being public, doing so can risk exposure of their gender identities. Organizations like those we heard from are aware of these complex challenges, and their staff think hard about how best to keep their clients safe in this context.

For domestic workers, who are 90 percent women, disproportionately Black or Hispanic, and more likely than other types of workers to be foreign-born,[1] seeking their rights in court may have adverse consequences. As in agriculture and other low-paid industries, human trafficking is rampant in the domestic care work industry, especially for migrants whose legal status is based on their employer. The T Visa – a humanitarian visa for victims of human trafficking – has been one recourse for people in this dire situation. Yet, as we learned from the panelists, even pursuing a T Visa may lead to targeting by ICE.

funders should support organizations like these so they can do their life-saving work – and be ready ready when the backlash comes

Organizations like CRLA, Damayan, and Venceremos serve the most vulnerable, but today they find themselves under attack from emboldened white supremacist and anti-immigrant actors. Serious organizers know this tension well: after the win comes the backlash. Even so, they and so many other leaders and organizations across the country continue to stand up and serve their communities – "even," as one speaker said, "if they are shaking, even if their voices are trembling… they are finding their voices to speak up."

The webinar highlighted the many opportunities for funders to support migrant women workers. As a sector, we can:

  • support worker organizing campaigns like the kind being done by Damayan, Venceremos, and many others.
  • invest in strategies to ensure broad access to information about basic rights, including efforts to reach domestic and farm workers in the home or in remote areas.
  • strengthen cybersecurity and information protection measures for organizations working with vulnerable immigrant communities.
  • resource litigation in support of migrant women and LGBTQ+ workers and the organizations that serve them to ensure access to legal protections and recourse. 

In this moment when migrant communities and the organizations that support them are at genuine risk, we must stand in solidarity with them by resourcing the work. As always at GCIR, we stand in partnership with philanthropy to resource and amplify the leadership of immigrants and refugees and take bold action toward our collective liberation. If you are interested in the intersections of gender and migration and would like to get in touch on this topic, please reach out.

The webinar transcript will be available until the end of April. Access it here.

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