Intersectional Coalitions: The Paradoxes of Rights‐Based Movement Building in LGBTQ and Immigrant Communities

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12248
• Date: 01 March 2017

Intersectional Coalitions: The Paradoxes of

Rights-Based Movement Building in LGBTQ and

Immigrant Communities

Erin M. Adam

Over the past decade, inter- and intra-movement coalitions composed of

organizations within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer

(LGBTQ) and immigrant rights movements have formed at the local level.

These coalitions speak to a massive organizing effort that has achieved some

rights campaign successes. However,coalition unity that culminated in “wins”

like marriage equality came at a cost. While both movements expanded and

unified, they simultaneously ossified around goals that matter to the most

privileged segments of their respective communities. The result is a paradox:

coalitions do sometimes form within and across movements, promote endur-

ing unity across seemingly divergent movements, and facilitate rights cam-

paign “wins.” However, coalitions simultaneously reinforce hierarchical

exclusions through the continued marginalization of issues that uproot con-

ventional power dynamics, like police violence, economic inequality, and gen-

der justice. This essay argues that the construction of a common “civil rights

past” identity within coalitions can help to explain this paradox. The develop-

ment of this collective identity expands movements, occasionally thwarting

the power dynamics responsible for the centering of the interests of the most

privileged constituencies within social movements. However, the episodic

nature of rights-based campaigns simultaneously contains and undermines

the formation of this collective identity, reinforcing movement divisions based

on race, gender,and class.

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance and encouragement of George Lov-

ell and Michael McCann as well as Chandan Reddy, Rachel Cichowski, Naomi Murakawa,

and Dara Strolovitch who provided feedback and support at various stages of this study.

The author would also like to thank members of the Comparative Law and Society Studies

Center at the University of Washington (UW), especially Heather Evans and Tanya

Kawarki who provided feedback on early versions of this essay in a writing group and

Katherine Beckett, Steve Herbert, Stephen Meyers, Arzoo Osanloo, and Carolyn Pinedo-

Turnovsky whose comments during a workshare helped develop this essay. The author is

further grateful for the constructive comments of numerous academic conference attend-

ees and discussants, especially Anna-Maria Marshall, Michael Bosia, Scott Barclay, Shauna

Fisher, and Zein Murib, and various anonymous reviewers. The author would also like to

thank the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and the Department of Political Science

at the University of Washington for the grant funding necessary to complete this study.

Finally, and most importantly, the author would like to thank the organization leaders,

advocates, community workers, and activists who participated in this study,whose incredi-

ble movement-building in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds she is in complete

awe of and whose amazing work in the struggle against oppression far surpasses the con-

fines of academic research.

Please direct all correspondence to Erin M. Adam, Department of Political Science,

University of Washington, 101 Gowen Hall, Box 353530, Seattle, WA 98195; e-mail:

emadam@uw.edu.

Law & Society Review, Volume 51, Number 1 (2017)

V

C2017 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

132

In the late 1990s and 2000s, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-

gender, and Queer (LGBTQ)

1

and immigrant rights movements

were struggling to advance their different agendas in the wake of

substantial legal losses in Washington State and Arizona. The

movements operated separately, and to some degree in a hostile

manner toward one another. For example, in 2004, when leaders

of one immigrant rights organization in Washington State pro-

posed intervening in a doomed marriage equality lawsuit on

behalf of same-sex couples, members of the organization vehe-

mently objected on religious grounds (O’Hagan 2013). In 2008,

the No on Proposition 102 Campaign, which failed to thwart the

passage of a statewide constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in

Arizona, did not include coalition partnerships with Latinx

2

and

immigrant rights organizations or leaders (Arizona Together 2008;

Vote No on Prop 102 2008).

Shortly after 2008, these same organizations began to unite

through intersectional coalitions around legislation and ballot ref-

erendum campaigns, including: statewide marriage equality cam-

paigns in Washington and Arizona; a campaign to provide state

financial aid for undocumented students in Washington; and a

campaign to stop Senate Bill (SB)

3

1062 in Arizona, a proposed

expansion of the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act

(RFRA) that, if passed, would have allowed state businesses to

1

Many of the LGBTQ organizations referenced in this project do not use the same

acronym or terminology to identify sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expres-

sion. This is a reflection of broad debate and community tensions both among organizations

and within academia over language and identity. Inorder to best achieve clarity and inclu-

siveness, and because this project concerns inter- and intra-movement alliances, I use the

term “LGBTQ” to broadly refer to the organizing of mainstream organizations that focus

on issues like marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws as well as marginalized queer

and trans organizations that focus on issues like socioeconomic, racial, gender,and disability

justice. In other words, I use the term “LGBTQ” when referencing the social movement as

a whole. I use “lesbian and gay,”“L esbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB),” “mainstream Lesbian,

Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT),” and “mainstream LGBTQ” to refer to main-

stream organizations that have primarily focused on legalizing marriage equality and pass-

ing anti-discrimination and hate crimes laws from the early 2000s to today. I use the terms

“queer,” “transgender,” “gender nonconforming,” and “trans” to refer to marginalized

organizations that are committed to economic racial, and gender justice issues that are

broadly aimed at contesting power.

2

The term “Latinx” started to surge among student, activist, and community building

groups in 2015, including groups that are part of this study as a gender non-specific term to

describe the range of gender identities present within Latino/a, Latin@ communities

(Logue 2015). Although the term is still deeply contested, the author uses it in this study

because it has been used by various study participants in describing themselves.

3

The abbreviation “SB” (short for “Senate Bill”) is commonly used to refer to legisla-

tion that originates in the Senate, the upper house in a bicameral state legislature. “HB”

(short for “House Bill”), by contrast, refers to legislation that originates in a state’s House of

Representatives, the lower house. These legislative entities can have other names, such as

General Assembly or Legislative Assembly, in different states.

Adam 133

refuse service to LGBTQ-identified people. Despite these notable

successes, however, these coalitions have largely been resistant to

advancing racial, economic, and gender justice issues that matter

the most to the more marginalized members of their respective

movements, like immigration detention, police violence, and

trans equity.

The achievement of LGBTQ and immigrant rights successes

in Arizona and Washington reveals that a paradox exists at the

center of coalition formation. On the one hand, coalitions some-

times can form across movements, contributing to new partner-

ships, fostering lasting unity across organizations that represent

people who hold seemingly disparate identities, and facilitating

rights campaign “wins.” On the other hand, these newly formed

coalitions often reinforce existing hierarchical exclusions through

the continued marginalization of those issues that uproot conven-

tional power dynamics the most. This study seeks to explain this

paradox. What contributes to successful coalition formation? How

do we explain coalitions like the LGBTQ and immigrant rights

alliances described above that are simultaneously inclusive and

exclusive? I argue that the development of a collective “civil

rights past” identity, based in the recognition of common oppo-

nents and the construction of a shared social movement past, aids

in the formation of intersectional coalitions. The development of

a common civil rights past identity is not something that happens

automatically, but has to be constructed, highlighted, and worked

at. It expands social movements by fostering the inclusion of new

groups and constituencies that can aid in the fight to achieve

rights campaign “wins” and thwart “losses.” However, at the same

time, the mechanics that drive the construction of this collective

identity reinforce hierarchical divisions both within and across

the groups that compose the newly formed coalitions.

In explaining this paradox, this study draws from the work

of intersectionality scholars who decry the casting of social move-

ments within a single-identity, unidimensional lens that ignores

and makes invisible important differences (see e.g., Cho, Cren-

shaw, and McCall 2013; Collins 1989; Crenshaw 1989; Crenshaw

1991; Hancock 2016; Puar 2011). Most intersectionality scholars

focus on how constructions of single-group identities reinforce

social stratification. For example, studies conducted by these

scholars explain how the centering of white women’s experiences

in struggles for gender justice erases the experiences of women

of color or how the construction of modern queer subjects

depends on the production of terrorist bodies (Crenshaw 1991;

Puar 2011). Yet, intersectionality also refers to the formation of

multi-group identity along different structural strata, across mul-

tiple movements. Intersectionality in this sense, for instance,

134 Intersectional Coalitions