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Transplanting the organizing seed: Seasoned activists’ political habitus and the transnational social field

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Abstract

This article examines the political habitus of “seasoned activists,” a group of individuals that capitalize on their long-standing activism and organizing experience gained in El Salvador to build community-based organizations in the Washington, DC metro area. Through in-depth and semi-structured interviews with 25 seasoned activists, I find that although they have transitioned to locally based community work, they have maintained an activist and committed political habitus, defined as the dispositions, thoughts, and actions that influence the political choices of an actor and come to underlie the political ethos that a change-agent uses. Nevertheless, the role of the Salvadoran government in expatriate communities and a changing DC context produce contentious conditions for seasoned activists to practice their organizing work. These findings add to the growing literature on Salvadoran transnational practices, both reaffirming some of the tensions embedded in the social field and elucidating how transnational actors challenge the very processes that subjugate them.

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Notes

  1. There is still disagreement over the transnational framework. For debates see Waldinger (2006), Wimmer and Glick-Schiller (2002).

  2. According to Freeland (2010), there is a new sanctuary movement focusing on immigrant rights but Salvadorans are not discussed in his analysis.

  3. Baker-Cristales (2004) and Miller (2013) also note that ethnic identity helps Salvadorans mobilize in the United States.

  4. Although Peraza (2008) points out that hometown associations can be politically influential at the local level.

  5. Though the focus is not Salvadorans, Green (2005) argues homeland relations strongly affect emigrants.

  6. The government’s presence in the diaspora is controversial because of its historical precedent in policing activists in the United States with help from the FBI (see Hamilton and Chinchilla, 2001).

  7. In fact, Wolf (2009) claims that successive ARENA governments maintained a façade of democracy in order to reproduce electoral authoritarianism and defend elite interests.

  8. There are a few exceptions because five seasoned activists do transnational political work through the FMLN sub-committees in the metro area. However, they mentioned that this work is sporadic and only occurs during electoral periods.

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback as well as Woody Doane, Nick Crossley and Nicholas Ealy for their comments on an earlier draft.

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  1. University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT

    Karen Tejada

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Tejada, K. Transplanting the organizing seed: Seasoned activists’ political habitus and the transnational social field. Lat Stud 13, 339–357 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2015.32

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