Organizing The Organized

“Sociologists who study organizations sometimes use the term ‘field’ to describe a set of organizations linked together as competitors and collaborators within a social space devoted to a particular type of action — such as a market for certain products, the pursuit of urban development, or the realm of electoral politics. Agreements struck among the organizations that compose a field set the bounds on what kinds of organizational and individual action are possible.” – Nicole Marwell 

The first time I met the members of SEDOAC they were holding a workshop about negotiation and participation with an emphasis on their rights. That single day four different groups of people were there to ask SEDOAC to participate in their respective investigations. There was a doctorate student of public health who was investigating the impact that migration has on the health of migrants, there was another girl conducting interviews (I didn’t get to hear what they were about), there was a journalist that has been working with SEDOAC for over a year creating a podcast about people at the margins of Spanish society, and lastly, there was a group of journalists interested in conducting interviews about cases of sexual abuse in the workplace. In addition, this was their last time in the Center of Immigrant Participation and Integration (CEPI) which is funded by the European Union. Most of the activities that SEDOAC organized were held in this center, which donated their space to the different associations who needed it. It has been interesting to see how SEDOAC creates links with scholars, journalists, other associations, and the government. 

            SEDOAC also tries to work with political representatives. For example, Rommy Arce has backed SEDOAC, the domestic workers sector, and the immigrant community during her position as district councilor and through life-long activism. Arce is the political representative that advocated for SEDOAC and the domestic sector to get their own center financed by Madrid’s city council. Arce is known to be the first immigrant to occupy a governmental position in Madrid. She is originally from Lima Peru and she immigrated to Spain when she was fifteen, where she resided 10 years without papers before getting her Spanish nationality. To pay for her studies she worked various jobs in the service sector, including domestic work. She was elected as councilor for the Usera district during the Ahora Madrid government under Carmena and she has been a very controversial figure during her time as councilor because she supports Catalunyan independence, advocates against el día de la Hispanidad, and publicly condemns institutional racism. Arce claimed that Carmena’s government was not radical nor horizontal enough and that they had betrayed the leftist movement. Arce advocated for the domestic sector for more than two years, and this month SEDOAC finally got its center. For me this shows how having even one key figure inside the system can really help build bridges and create tangible changes. On the other side, just because the center is financed by Madrid, they have to adhere to certain codes of conduct. From this a complex dynamic is created in which SEDOAC has to “prove” the government they made the right choice investing in this center, but, on the other hand, SEDOAC is working against this same government. 

            There are several other immigrant and domestic workers associations in Madrid. From what I have seen, a lot of them frequently cooperate and hold meetings to talk about their common objectives and strategies that they might employ to reach them. Further, a lot of the events SEDOAC organizes are often co-organized with other associations. It is still not clear to me why there are many different associations if they have similar missions. In other words, I am trying to understand what particular things make the associations different from each other. By reading Marta’s oral history (name changed), one of SEDOAC’s members and founders, recorded by Maria Fernanda Cepeda, I understood that in the middle of the economic crisis domestic workers started to form a group which now is Territorio Doméstico. However, some immigrant women felt that the leadership of the group was being monopolized by Spanish domestic workers, and that that did not represent their reality and their priorities. Therefore they decided to create their own group, which eventually became SEDOAC. In the transcript Marta mentions that those who left the original big group were scared to start one all on their own, especially because they were very few and in the original one there were a lot of them. However, they decided to keep going. Territorio Domestico is composed of domestic workers from Spain, Latin America, Asia, and Africa and SEDOAC is solely composed of Latin Americans. From what I gather, both groups started to have tensions when they were working under the same group, but since they separated and formed their own particular associations, they have manage to cooperate with one another. This made me wonder about how to know when to fragment a group for it to work better. People tend to get impressed about the numbers of people behind one particular organization, but perhaps many smaller organizations working together can get more done and work more harmoniously.

            I would perhaps advise SEDOAC to talk to other organizations outside of Spain to see how they are working in their own contexts and the successful strategies that they have employed. Even though each city and country has its own particularities, there are important global patterns in the domestic sector and creating a cross border conversation could be valuable.