Primary Investigator:

Sasha Costanza-Chock, University of Southern California

Partnering Organizations:

Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA); Garment Worker Center

Immigrant workers in the city of Los Angeles have very limited access to channels of communication. Except in special circumstances, such as the May 2006 immigrant mobilizations, they are rarely treated as an audience for broadcast media, and even more rarely given voice.  This is true even of local radio and low-power FM (LPFM) stations. 

The Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA) and the Garment Worker Center (GWC) worked together to develop new strategies and capacities for broad-based communication among these immigrant groups. In particular, they worked to analyze the technical, organizational, and policy requirements for a hybrid radio/net/telephony project, run by and for immigrant workers. This communications network builds on the relative abundance of mobile phones within this community to help them communicate and organize more effectively, and highlights the growing importance of the mobile phone as a platform for basic media services—an emerging area that media policy researchers and advocacy organizations have mostly ignored.

The initial research mapped key needs of the low-wage immigrant communities in Los Angeles and assisted participating community-based organizations in developing their communication strategies--including popular communication training for workers. IDEPSCA currently works with 500 day laborers at six day laborer centers and three day laborer corners throughout LA. The GWC focuses on organizing low-wage Chinese and Latino garment workers in Los Angeles County, and currently serves some 90,000 workers employed in more than 4,500 sewing shops. In both cases, the limiting factor for communications efforts was not computers and broadband connectivity, but limited staff capacity.

The project sponsored an ongoing audio/radio content production workshop at GWC, focusing on worker-produced interviews, public service announcements, and know-your-rights announcements. Initially, these were distributed via CD—a medium that can circulate easily and cheaply in the target communities. A medium-term goal involved getting airplay for the content on existing radio stations. Longer-term goals include applying for LPFM licenses for stations run for (and with the participation of) the immigrant workers. Consistent with other studies of media in poor communities, this research confirmed that radio is the most important communication platform.
 
The project also identified mobile phones as a viable alternative distribution channel for many of the kinds of content and communication that affect the lives of immigrant workers. Mobile phones are by far the most accessible communication tool to most immigrants and have many uses across media.  Short Message Service (SMS) has been used to organize mass mobilizations and send action alerts; ring tones have been used to enhance and strengthen popular mobilization by serving as a new audio distribution and public broadcast mechanism; and automatic call-in systems have enabled podcasting, streaming, and live radio reports from the streets during mass mobilizations; while photo and, increasingly, video capabilities of mobile phones facilitate grassroots documentation of mobilizations.
 
Sascha Costanza-Chock, the GWA and IDEPSCA have begun to research and survey day laborers’ phone use and created a plan for a mobile-based storytelling system. While walled garden models, restrictive terms of service, and expensive pricing plans typically limit the use of multimedia in this context, the project has conducted some research in mapping alternative solutions. The next stage of the work, Mobile Voices (August 2008 – 2009), has been awarded a Large Collaborative Grant by the SSRC’s Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere program to build an open source digital storytelling network.

Researcher Sascha Costanza-Chock and Amanda Garcés (IDEPSCA) presented an overview of their 'Migrant Voices' project at the first Necessary Knowledge Grantee Workshop, held in February 2008 at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.  Their PowerPoint presentation is available below.

To read more about this collaboration...