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Enterprising citizenship: Mexican immigrant empowerment and public-private partnerships in Santa Ana, California

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Enterprising citizenship: Mexican immigrant empowerment and public-private partnerships in Santa Ana, California

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ENTERPRISING CITIZENSHIP:
MEXICAN IMMIGRANT EMPOWERMENT AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS IN SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA

by

Rigoberto Rodríguez

___________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(GEOGRAPHY)

August 2007

Copyright 2007 Rigoberto Rodriguez

ii
DEDICATION

To Mexican immigrant families who pursue their dreams in spite of the odds.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation was written during the most profound and dynamic years of
my life: I started the graduate program in Geography at the University of Southern
California as a newlywed; bought a house; then my mother developed dementia; my
older sister, Coquito, passed away; my two children were born; and I built up my
consulting business. Truly, the completion of this dissertation is the result of all the
support I received from family, friends, colleagues, and teachers during the past
seven years.
I particularly thank the professors on my dissertation committee who inspired
and supported me in different ways: Jennifer Wolch, Janelle Wong, Greg Hise, and
Laura Pulido. For Greg, thanks for your mentorship and guidance. Laura, for your
commitment to social justice in academia and trust in me through the highs and lows
of this project.
Next, this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of
the “despotic” dissertation group: Carolina Banks-Muñoz, Lorena Muñoz, and
especially Belinda Lum. My precious friend: many ideas herein came from our
coffee sessions at the Ragazzi room and our freeway conversations driving from one
meeting to the next across Los Angeles, as true urban geographers.
To my hermanos from UC Irvine: José Moreno, José Navarrete, José Solorio,
Alvaro Nuñez, Santana Ruiz, and Dean Matsubayashi. Our inner circle of
friendship, humor, and trust has kept the spirit of social justice alive in me all these

iv
years, reminding me that our late-night undergraduate conversations were real, not
fanciful.
To my father, Cenobio, and mother, Juana, the two most gentle and
intelligent people in my life. To my twelve brothers and sisters (Angel, Rafaél,
Altagracia, María Socorro, Guillermina, Filiberto, Raquel, Alfredo, Martha Hilda,
María Elena, Sergio Enrique, and Héctor Manuel) for teaching me the meaning of
caring, especially now that we are caring for our parents. And especially to you,
Coquito (1950-2005), our family’s ringleader of love. To name all my sixty-plus
nephews and nieces would take the rest of the page, so to all of you, thank you for
bearing with your tío.
To Rosalba, my wife, for her everlasting love, compassionate regaños and
her extensive training in the field of psychology, much needed during the time I
wrote this dissertation. To your lovely family, the Hernandez clan, which is now
mine, too.
Finally, to my two children, Katya Alegría and Emilio Ezra. You wake me up
every day, make me laugh every day, give me unconditional love every day, and
teach me more every day than all those years in school.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii
Acknowledgments iii
List of Tables vi
List of Figures vii
Acronyms ix
Abstract x
Introduction: Mexican Immigrant Empowerment: 1
Local Governance and Enterprising Citizenship
Chapter One: Urban Governance and Immigrant Political Agency: 29
The Neoliberal Local State, Enterprising Citizenship, and
Community Empowerment
Chapter Two: Research Design, Methods, and Context 72
Chapter Three: Self-Reliant Neighborhood Residents: Building 93
Community Capacity to Upscale a Mexican Immigrant City
Chapter Four: Fighting Poverty Is Good Business: Civic Entrepreneurs, 131
Mexican Immigrant Techno-Peasants and Gringolandia
in Downtown Santa Ana
Chapter Five: Incorporating a Progressive Movement: Building a 176
Community Center in the Delhi Neighborhood
Chapter Six: Resisting Empowerment? Delhi Center and the Local State 221
Chapter Seven: Conclusion: The Local Enterprising Citizenship Regime 266
and Latino Immigrant Political Subjects
References 276

vi
LIST OF TABLES

Table 6.1: Organizational Phases 225
Table 6.2: Delhi Center Empowerment Model 261

vii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Social Construction of Citizenship 73
Figure 2.2: Nested Sites and Scales 80
Figure 2.3: Severed Civic Worlds 90
Figure 3.1: Santa Ana Neighborhood Associations and Districts 102
Figure 3.2: The Social Service and Community Capacity Building Models 108
Figure 3.3: Grants for Blocks Projects through 2002. Brochure 115
Figure 4.1: Overlapping Maps, Space, Residents 143
Figure 4.2: FEZ Newsletter 147
Figure 4.3: The Daisy Wheel 149
Figure 4.4: Occupational Ladder 151
Figure 4.5: List Skills in Document 152
Figure 4.6: Hands, Workforce, FEZ, Navigator 155
Figure 4.7: Local, Regional, International 160
Figure 5.1: Delhi Historical Picture 181
Figure 5.2: Delhi Center, Picture 1—Seniors 185
Figure 5.3: Delhi Center, Picture 2—Porch 186
Figure 5.4: Delhi Center Construction 207
Figure 5.5: Delhi Center Celebration 208
Figure 5.6: Delhi Center Completion 209
Figure 5.7: Delhi Center Childcare 215

viii
Figure 5.8: Finding a Job 216
Figure 5.9: Entrepreneurial Training 217
Figure 5.10: Finding a Job or Managing Your Business 218
Figure 6.1: An Intimate Lesson on AIDS 248
Figure 6.2: Mujeres en Busca de un Mejor Futuro 249

ix
ACRONYMS

CDA City of Santa Ana Community Development Agency
CDR Community Development Resource Network
COM-LINK Communication Linkage
EDD City of Santa and Economic Development Department
ETAC Environmental and Transportation Advisory Committee
FEZ Federal Empowerment Zone
NIP Neighborhood Improvement Program
WIB Workforce Investment Board

x
ABSTRACT

How does the neoliberal transformation of the local state and changes to
citizenship impact the empowerment of Mexican immigrants? Do these changes
produce Mexican immigrant political subjects that promote or challenge neoliberal
policies? These questions are examined through an extended case study of Mexican
immigrant empowerment in the context of public-private partnerships in Santa Ana,
California, one of the country’s poorest cities. During the second half of the 1990s,
influenced by the federal Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the City of Santa Ana
developed a set of empowerment-oriented public-private partnerships designed to
address urban hardship by preparing people to become “enterprising citizens,” that
is, individuals who are economically self-sufficient (uses the labor market for
income) and socially self-reliant (does not rely on government for social support, but
instead turns to family, neighbors, and the voluntary sector). Urban regime leaders
used this concept of the enterprising citizen to legitimize the neoliberal restructuring
of the local state, favoring rentier and business interests.
In Santa Ana, it appears that empowerment processes associated with these
public-private partnerships produced a type of immigrant political subject that
ultimately supported a neoliberal project. These political subjects did not tend to
engage the local state through the electoral arena or direct demand-making (for
example, through livable wage campaigns or protests for rent-control). Even when
immigrants mobilized to make direct demands on local government, these efforts are

xi
actively incorporated into the urban regime’s empowerment efforts promoting
economic growth.

1
INTRODUCTION
Mexican Immigrant Empowerment:

Local Governance and Enterprising Citizenship

On September 5, 2004, the Los Angeles Times published an article entitled
“The Hard Life—Santa Ana Style,” an account of the hardships experienced by
Mexican immigrants living in Santa Ana, California. Santa Ana is a predominantly
immigrant city where foreign-born residents were over half of the population in
2000, constituting the second highest percentage of foreign-born of any U.S. city
above 50,000 residents.
1
Alluding to a national study
2
that found that Santa Ana
contained the highest levels of urban hardship in the country, the article stressed that
the city’s adversities were different than the urban poverty associated with de-
industrialized inner cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit, or Gary. Those cities, the
authors noted, were characterized by “abandoned homes and businesses, and soaring
unemployment and rampant homelessness.”
By contrast, urban hardship in Santa Ana occurred in the context of thriving
businesses and high employment, and low levels of housing vacancies and
homelessness. The article explained that urban hardship in Santa Ana resulted

1
Mike Anton and Jennifer Mena. “The Hard Life—Santa Ana Style.” Los Angeles Times,
California Metro, September 5, 2004.

2
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. An Update on Urban Hardship.
August 2004. David J. Wright, Director. State University of New York, Urban & Metropolitan
Studies. http://www.rockinst.org.

2
mainly from the convergence of low-wage, deskilled jobs (with few, if any, benefits)
and high housing and other living costs associated with the suburban affluence of
Orange County. The experiences of two Mexican immigrants, Candelario Tapia and
Enayda Morales, illustrated that. The article began by describing Tapia’s multiple
low-wage jobs:
Tapia shines shoes in downtown Santa Ana from 8 a.m. to 3 pm. Monday
through Friday. Each evening, he works four hours as a janitor. On Saturday
and Sunday, he parks cars 11 hours each day….For 77 hours of work, Tapia
earns $561 a week.

Making ends meet in high-cost Santa Ana required other personal sacrifices
and household strategies, as seen in Enayda Morales’ living situation:
Her husband earns $400 a week in an auto body shop. The family subsists on
rice and beans. Chicken is a splurge. Their two-bedroom apartment costs
$1,200. One of the bedrooms is sublet to a family of five for $500.

The article suggested that even these strategies were insufficient to overcome
the hardship caused by the structure of low wages combined with high housing and
living costs. Holding multiple low-wage jobs, limiting food expenses, and renting a
room to another family in the same apartment were mainly ways to cope with
hardship, not strategies to eliminate it. Enayda Morales crystallized this point by
calling urban hardship in Santa Ana la rueda Americana or “the American
treadmill.” These individual and household strategies, moreover, did not rely on
government: none of these vignettes reveal the presence of government agencies
seeking to address urban hardship for immigrants.

3
Low-wage, de-skilled work; high rental and living costs; and government’s
absence in ameliorating the impact of hardship on vulnerable populations all underlie
the cycle of urban hardship for Santa Ana’s Mexican immigrant population. These
conditions are the outcome of neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the state
during the past thirty years (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Harvey 2005, Jessop 2002;
Peck and Tickell 2002, Sassen 1991, 1998, 2003). Neoliberal economic restructuring
has promoted free trade between countries, and within the United States, the creation
of flexible labor markets. In local economies, this has resulted in a polarized wage
structure, with high-paying, knowledge-intensive jobs at the one end, and de-skilled,
low-paying jobs at the other. Neoliberal political restructuring has promoted active
individualism, while undermining the national Welfare State through a regressive
taxation system that provides tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
For several reasons, the neoliberal restructuring of the U.S. economy during
the 1990s has had a particularly harsh impact on Mexican immigrants. Jeffrey Passel
(2005) notes that Mexican migration from 1992 to 2000 was closely associated with
macro-trends in the U.S. economy, marked by the expansion of low-paid, deskilled
jobs. In 1993, the U.S. economy added 1.59 million jobs, the first full year of
recovery after the 1991 recession; in 1998, it added an additional 1.85 million; and in
2000, 3.4 million jobs (Passel 2005). The increase in employment during this period
attracted migrants from many countries, increasing the number of foreign-born
residents in the U.S. from 19.8 million in 1990 to 31.1 million in 2000, an increase of
52 percent (Malone et al. 2003). This recent migration attracted many of today’s

4
undocumented immigrants: 86 percent of the estimated 10.1 million undocumented
immigrants residing in the United States in 2004 entered the country after 1990
(Passel 2005).
Mexico, which in 1994 suffered another of a long series of severe economic
downturns, represented by far the largest source of immigrants during this period:
332,000 legal and unauthorized migrants per year in the early 1990s; 507,000 per
year in the late 1990s; and cresting at 530,000 new arrivals in 2000. Indeed, the vast
majority of the undocumented migration since 1990 has come from Mexico:
Mexicans were 70 percent of the undocumented migrants entering the United States
from 1990 through 1994; 80 percent from 1995 through 1999; and 85 percent from
2000 through 2004 (Passel 2005). By 2000, Mexican immigrants accounted for
thirty percent of the foreign-born population, or 9.2 million, significantly higher than
any other nationality (the second largest nationality, Chinese, numbered 1.5 million).
Due largely to their low educational levels, Mexican immigrants were also
concentrated in low-paid, dead-end sectors of the U.S. economy (Bobo et al. 2000;
Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Waldinger and Lichter 2003).
Neoliberal social policies have generally weakened the support services
available to families in vulnerable economic situations, and in the case of
undocumented Mexican immigrants, those policies have denied them access to what
remains of those services. Moreover, many Mexican immigrants are excluded from
formal political processes, because they lack formal citizenship, do not speak
English, or are alienated from the communities where they reside. Taken together,

5
these demographic and legal characteristics mean that Mexican immigrants lack the
economic clout and political rights that otherwise might enable them to be directly
involved in shaping social and economic policies.
Equally as significant, neoliberal political and economic restructuring has had
a negative impact on places where Mexican immigrants reside, namely in inner cities
and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. While federal and state-level funding
for social programs was decreasing, poor and de-skilled residents were becoming
increasingly concentrated in these cities. The cities, in turn, have experienced
chronic fiscal crises as local governments have struggled to provide a safety net for
their low-income residents. Local government (understood as the many city and
county government agencies) is often lacking in capacity and resources to meet these
serious challenges. Today, to address economic and social crises, it is necessary to
involve civic and business leaders. This shifts the focus of problem-solving from the
activities of local government to the process of local governance, understood as the
interrelated activities of all these local actors.
3

Indeed, since the mid-1990s, local governance has been transformed in de-
industrialized inner cities (like Flint and Detroit in Michigan) as well as in cities at
the bottom of urban hierarchies (like Santa Ana). One important aspect of this
change has been the emergence of public-private partnerships, which are the

3
The act of governance can be carried out through a governing coalition or a city political
machine, but the dominant model for urban governance is rooted in the theory of “urban regimes,”
which appear to be better able to respond to rapidly changing political and economic conditions than
do machines or coalitions.

6
principal mechanism through which local governance occurs. Led by businesses
leaders, government agencies, and elected officials, these private-public partnerships
focus on economic growth. Those in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban
hierarchies specialize in the incorporation of marginalized populations into the low-
wage local labor market, largely by tapping into workforce development funds from
the federal government (so-called, welfare-to-work programs). When working with
marginalized populations in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies,
these public-private partnerships have actively used the discourse of empowerment
(Jessop 2002). This discourse, however, has a distinct neoliberal bent. It promotes
economic self-sufficiency, by emphasizing the importance of gaining the skills
needed to enter the labor market, and it encourages self-reliance, by arguing that
individuals should resort to family and the voluntary sector to solve problems rather
than relying on government to solve problems for them. Thus, these practices
promote a minimal role for government in addressing social problems, while
advocating for an active government role in supporting local business. In short, the
neoliberal form of empowerment supports a business growth agenda, while refuting
government’s redistributive role in society.
Santa Ana provides a good example of empowerment-oriented, public-private
partnerships focused on incorporating immigrants into the local economic growth
coalition. The city’s urban regime—defined as an informal yet enduring arrangement
between elected officials, business leaders, and government managers that facilitates
the development and maintenance of growth-oriented local policies (Stone 1989)—

7
has been in place since the early 1980s. Instead of recognizing low-wage structures
and high housing costs as the principal sources of hardship, urban regime leaders
attributed poverty primarily to the immigrant population’s low levels of formal
education and work skills. Rather than improving the low-wage structures through a
livable-wage ordinance or reducing high housing costs by increasing the stock of
affordable housing units, Santa Ana’s leadership focused on increasing the
educational and work-skill levels of the city’s predominantly Mexican immigrant
labor force.
4

Since the mid-1990s, Santa Ana’s urban regime leaders have aggressively
launched many empowerment-oriented public-private partnerships. Some have
promoted economic self-sufficiency by seeking to improve the educational level and
work skills of Mexican immigrant residents. Among the more prominent economic
self-sufficiency initiatives were a California Enterprise Zone designation in 1993, a
prestigious $100 million Federal Empowerment Zone obtained in 1998, a Workforce
Investment Board in 1999, and a Work Center that coordinates employment and
training services for residents and facilitates tax incentives for local businesses that
hire them. The City has also established various public-private partnerships to
advance self-reliance. During the mid- to late-1990s, the City formed over sixty
neighborhood associations and built a network of over seven hundred grassroots
nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping Santa Ana’s 337,977 residents become

4
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, July/August 2003, Vol. 7, No. 4.

8
self-reliant. (By comparison, Los Angeles, a city of almost four million residents, has
roughly eighty formal neighborhood associations.)
This dissertation examines the workings of the empowerment process within
these public-private partnerships in Santa Ana in order to understand how Mexican
immigrants might use that process to collectively challenge the underlying
conditions that generate urban hardship. Significantly, these empowerment-oriented
partnerships are more than just economic initiatives: the urban regime uses them to
fashion a particular type of political subject through an investment in, and
legitimizing of, the idealized neoliberal citizen. I call these individuals “enterprising
citizens.” They are people who not only seek to be economically self-sufficient and
socially self-reliant, but as political subjects, they actively support and legitimize
local government’s role in promoting an economic growth agenda, and they
discourage a redistributive role that might otherwise provide support for those who
are most adversely affected by low-wage structures and high housing and living
costs.
Thus, this study goes beyond the merely economic to address questions of the
production of citizenship, understood not simply as a set of formal civil and political
rights, but as the creation of specific types of political subjects. In the era of local
governance in Santa Ana (from 1980 to the present day), the private-public
partnerships created by urban regime leaders are key institutional sites producing
immigrants as a specific type of political subject. By empowering immigrant
individuals to gain control over their circumstances through economic self-

9
sufficiency and social self-reliance, these public-private partnership produce in
immigrants a sense of citizenship—of belonging to a particular, local political
community—even if those immigrants are not naturalized citizens. However, in
Santa Ana, the political community is anchored in the neoliberal and
neoconservative political ideology promoted by the urban regime leaders. To belong
to the city is to support decreased government involvement in addressing social
problems and increased government support in promoting business growth.
A key question then is how does the neoliberal transformation of the local
state
5
and the changes to citizenship impact the empowerment of Mexican
immigrants? Do these changes to the local state and citizenship produce Mexican
immigrant political subjects that promote or challenge neoliberal policies? A central
issue is whether the empowerment process within public-private partnerships
produces a type of citizen who accepts the neoliberal position that the role of
government is to intervene only minimally in the economy and to help individuals
develop skills to enter into the labor market on a strong footing. Implicitly, such
citizens would reject the progressive position that government should intervene
actively in the economy, in particular, by regulating housing costs and wages and by
providing benefits in order to assist those individuals who are socioeconomically
disadvantaged.

5
The “local state” is the set of policies (laws, statutes, regulations, and rules) and formal
governmental authorities that constitute a local jurisdiction. It is shaped by the members of the urban
regime, based on their political and economic interests. Thus, policies are biased in a particular
ideological direction.

10
Prominent scholars working on questions of immigrant political agency
propose that immigrants, despite lacking formal political rights, can use the
empowerment process to produce a progressive citizenship. This is done by helping
immigrants to assert social rights in local areas and to pressure local government to
provide a social safety net. By reasserting the local state’s obligations to provide
resources to address hardships, this empowerment process actively challenges
neoliberal policies (Holston and Appadurai 1996, 2003; Sassen 1998, 2003, 2005).
Indeed, scholars believe that immigrants are able to claim social rights in these urban
areas because of a larger restructuring of citizenship. As they restructure into supra-
national states to facilitate the flow of goods and financial capital, nation-states begin
to lose their exclusive hold on citizenship (Castles and Davidson 2001; Sassen 1998;
Soysal 1994, 2000). This has led to the emergence of denationalized local citizenship
practices, whereby immigrants are able to mobilize people, organizations, and the
broader public to force local government to provide resources to address urban
hardship (Sassen 2003, 2006).
The immigrant political agency scholarship, however, has failed to
understand that urban regime leaders in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban
hierarchies (and not just immigrants themselves) can use public-private partnerships
and the empowerment process to shape identity and belonging to a place. By
influencing the way immigrants see themselves, in terms of belonging and identity,
and by extending a set of social rights at the local level to those immigrants who
embrace a particular formula (in the case of Santa Ana, one anchored in a neoliberal

11
ideology), urban regimes legitimize specific political projects. Indeed, in a city like
Santa Ana, where immigrants are heavily excluded from the formal electoral arena,
public-private partnerships have arguably become a key mechanism determining
who has the right to make demands on the local government.
For its part, the urban governance scholarship has failed to examine how
immigrants participate in public-private partnerships, and the ways in which
citizenship is a particularly complex experience for local residents. Most of the
urban governance literature, for instance, does not explore the implications of being
an undocumented or legal permanent resident when it comes to making demands on
the local government. In the U.S., only thirteen percent of immigrants who entered
the country since 1990 are naturalized citizens, compared to forty percent of those
who came before 1970 (Malone, Baluja, Costanzo, and Davis 2003).
Based on research from an extended case study of empowerment transpiring
in Santa Ana’s public-private partnerships, I examine two dimensions of the
relationships between political elites and local government actors—the urban
regime’s leadership—and grassroots organizations and Mexican immigrants. First,
how do urban regime leaders discursively and institutionally structure the
empowerment process through public-private partnerships? How does this
empowerment seek to include immigrant residents as members of a city? What
political ideology do urban regime members use to organize the public-private
partnerships? What model of citizenship is presupposed or produced by these public-
private partnerships? Second, how do local grassroots organizations and Mexican

12
immigrants engage urban regime members through the mediation of empowerment-
oriented public-private partnerships? In what ways do grassroots organizations and
Mexican immigrants access the local state through these partnerships? In what ways
do grassroots organizations support, resist, or oppose the urban regime’s dominant
form empowerment and citizenship? Through these public-private partnerships, can
grassroots organizations influence the formation of a type of citizenship that both
claims social rights while also challenging the underlying forms of social inequality?
If so, how does this happen?
My analysis of Santa Ana’s empowerment-oriented public-private
partnerships reveals that urban regime leaders use public-private partnerships to
invest in the creation of certain types of citizens, in particular, the ideal of the
“enterprising citizen.” This is a subject who is economically self-sufficient (uses the
labor market for income) and socially self-reliant (does not rely on government for
social or economic support, but instead turns to family, neighbors, and the voluntary
sector). Second, the urban regime uses this enterprising citizen to encourage political
subjects to support the urban regime’s neoliberal ideology and the local state’s role
in supporting business interests. Enterprising citizens support a political ideology
with at least three tenets: (a) social rights must be earned at the local level, not
granted as entitlements by the nation state; (b) local government’s role is to promote
business development and competitiveness, not to participate in redistributive
policies; and, (c) the private and voluntary sectors, not government, are responsible
for addressing hardship.

13
Another way that urban regime members use the empowerment process
embedded in public-private partnerships to shape citizenship is by supporting some
forms of social action over others. On the one hand, public-private partnerships
encourage grassroots organizations and immigrant residents to engage in collective
action that decreases dependency on government and increases the use of market-
oriented strategies. On the other hand, public-private partnerships inhibit the
emergence of a critical set of public policies
6
that seek to address the underlying
sources of urban hardships (in the case of Santa Ana, the low-wage structures and
high housing and living costs). The partnerships inhibit these public policies not by
repressing them, but by providing technical assistance and financial and symbolic
incentives to follow a particular form of community empowerment that focuses
instead on increased individual responsibility and greater voluntary sector
involvement in addressing hardships. Finally, this community empowerment process
is contained within the state/civil society networks that are part of the public-private
partnerships, and it does not enter into the formal political-electoral field, which
normally would be the site for formulating public policies to force local government
into a more redistributive role vis-à-vis urban hardships.
My analysis of the empowerment process in Santa Ana’s public-private
partnerships also suggests that the urban regime’s investments in community
empowerment can sometimes have unintended effects. For instance, the investment

6
These include livable wage campaigns, rent controls, economic boycotts, and community
benefits agreements, to name a few.

14
in organizational and community capacity building can help individuals and
organizations resist the urban regime’s politically conservative ideology. This
grassroots resistance, however, rarely expresses itself in traditionally progressive
ways (for example, through livable wage campaigns, rent controls, economic
boycotts, and community benefits agreements, to name a few). Resistance strategies
might not even be based on using the political-electoral field to reshape the local
state but instead be more focused on micro-level processes in grassroots
organizations and nonprofit agencies. These micro-level practices—which generally
go under the banner of empowerment—include leadership development,
organizational capacity building, community mobilization, and other practices
focused on issues relating to daily life. They can increase the capacity of an
organization or community to address complex social and economic problems, and
even help immigrants assert social rights and make demands on local government.
However, those who use these practices are highly susceptible to ongoing co-
optation into the politically conservative projects of urban regime leaders,
particularly because the practices are not always conducted within a critical
framework that would identify social inequality or unequal power relations between
different groups in a city.
In Santa Ana, it appears that empowerment processes associated with new
forms of local governance produced a type of immigrant political agency that
ultimately supported a neoliberal project. Although certain types of urban hardship
can be ameliorated by the sort of individual and household strategies that are

15
encouraged by neoliberalism, that ideology generally does not support the collective
challenging of low-wage work structures, high housing costs, or the state’s
withdrawal of a social safety net. On the other hand, while changes in nation-state
citizenship may enable immigrants to mobilize civic networks to press local
government for resources to address hardships, immigrant-led empowerment
processes are highly susceptible to political exclusion or co-option. Co-optation is
particularly pronounced in the neoliberal empowerment process, because those
involved lack a critical perspective that names unequal power relations, they fail to
unmask the complicity between local state policies and business interests, and they
fail to help immigrants engage the political networks that shape local state policies.

A PUBLIC POLICY CONTRADICTION: CRIMINAL FOREIGNERS OR
COMMUNITY ASSETS?
My interest in how urban regime leaders use new forms of local governance,
empowerment, and citizenship to advance neoliberal interests emerged between 1993
and 1999, while I was working at a grassroots nonprofit organization in Santa Ana.
During these six years, I witnessed a profound contradiction: public policies both
demonized and idealized Mexican immigrants. In 1993, a movement began in
Orange County seeking to deny Mexican immigrants access to public services. By
1994, with the support of the California Republican Party, it had evolved into a
statewide effort that crystallized around Proposition 187. That ballot proposition
touched off a broader public discourse that labeled Mexican immigrants as

16
“undeserving” and “dependent” citizens who took advantage of (White) taxpayer
generosity. It also branded Mexican immigrants as “illegal aliens,” defining them
both as “non-citizens” and “criminals” (criminal foreigners). Proposition 187 not
only sought to prohibit undocumented Mexican immigrants from using public
resources. Its underlying intent was to deny undocumented Mexican immigrants any
social rights while in the United States. Socially constructed as criminal foreigners
through this proposed legislation, Mexican immigrants did not merit the support or
protection of the state.
The media quickly turned this complex argument about citizenship and social
rights into a commonsense anti-immigrant discourse: if you entered the United States
“illegally,” you were therefore a “criminal foreigner.” I distinctly remember the
media’s discourse because, as the treasurer of the political action committee Orange
County Against Proposition 187, I helped organize countless debates where speakers
roused anti-immigrant audiences simply by saying that “illegal aliens” had no right
to access public services because they had broken the law by being in the United
States “illegally.”
7
Although the State of California was barred from implementing
most provisions in Proposition 187, the public discourse that stigmatized Mexican
immigrants as undeserving, dependent denizens and as criminal non-citizens
threaded itself into national political debates that shaped federal policy in the mid-to-

7
It is not the case that undocumented immigrants relinquish all rights upon entering the
United States. This is clear in the Plyler v Doe U.S. 202 (1982), where the Supreme Court ruled that
children of undocumented children have a right to public education.

17
late 1990s. Frances Fox Piven (2002) has shown how the anti-immigrant, racist, and
patriarchal assumptions implicit in Proposition 187 were also critical components of
two landmark federal legislative acts enacted in 1996: the Welfare Reform Act; and
the Immigration Reform Act. The anti-immigrant political discourse also provided
justification and resources for the increased militarization of the United States-
Mexico border through Operation Gatekeeper (Nevins 2002).
Taken altogether, these repressive federal and state legislative acts revealed a
strong relationship between the negative social construction of Mexican immigrants
and the punitive public policies directed at them. In their theory of public policy
design, Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram (1997, 2005) argue that the strong
association between the social construction of a population and public policies
directed at them is linked to a broader politics of citizenship. Public policies not only
target specific populations; they also simultaneously socially construct these “target
populations” as specific types of citizens. Target populations are defined through a
model of citizenship that stresses four dimensions: independent or dependent and
deserving or undeserving. Business owners, for example, are typically defined as
independent and deserving citizens. People of Color, on the other hand, are generally
viewed as dependent and undeserving citizens. Schneider and Ingram’s central
hypothesis is that the social construction of citizenship will largely determine the
range and types of policies directed at the population. The social construction of
Mexican immigrants as dependent, undeserving citizens—and criminal foreigners—

18
was a constitutive element of the repressive, punitive public policies of the mid-
1990s.
At the local level in Santa Ana, the picture was much the same. Civic and
political leaders and city government managers followed the statewide and national
trend, reacting to the city’s striking demographic shift by stereotyping Mexican
immigrants as burdens and criminals.
8
This led to the implementation of repressive
policies, which sought, among other things, to exclude and limit the number of
Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana (Harwood and Myers 2002).
9
Most of these
policies were implemented by the repressive and enforcement arms of the local state,
that is, the Police and Code Enforcement Departments. Grassroots advocacy
organizations working with Mexican immigrants responded strongly, using a variety
of legal and political strategies to fight back. Among other things, they won legal
injunctions against an overcrowding ordinance and obtained housing set-aside
concessions in five of Santa Ana’s six redevelopment zones.
10

At the height of the negative social construction of Mexican immigrants, a
different trend suddenly appeared in Santa Ana and Orange County, one that
constructed Mexican immigrants in a positive light by depicting them as community
assets rather than criminal foreigners. Local government agencies and philanthropic

8
Between 1980 and 1990, over 90,000 new residents moved to this city of approximately
338,000 (Census 1980, 1990).

9
These legislative acts also targeted poor women, people of color, and poor people
generally.

10
See Briseño v. City of Santa Ana, (1992) 6 Cal.App.4th 1378, 8 Cal.Rptr.2d 486.

19
organizations in Santa Ana and Orange County began to involve immigrant
communities in public-private partnerships that promoted social self-reliance and
economic self-sufficiency. These new partnerships defined Mexican immigrants as
hard-working community members, family-oriented, and with the capacity for self-
reliance and economic self-sufficiency. Importantly, in Santa Ana, the favorable
social construction of Mexican immigrant citizenship at the local level produced a
shift in the types of public policies targeting Mexican immigrants. Instead of
repressing immigrants, local government agencies began to partner with grassroots
organizations to assist Mexican immigrants to develop the capacity to become
economically self-sufficient and socially self-reliant. For example, from the mid-
1990s onward, using an Asset-Based Community Development
11
approach, city
government agencies began to help grassroots organizations better identify the
strengths of Mexican immigrants—not just their deficits—and to utilize these assets
to resolve community problems.
During this time, Santa Ana’s urban regime launched initiatives through the
Economic Development Department and the Neighborhood Improvement Program,
implemented through partnerships with the private and voluntary sector. Importantly,
these public-private partnerships intervened at the level of citizenship, redefining
who belonged to the city and who had the right to engage the local state. For
instance, unlike the formal electoral system that excluded Mexican immigrants, these

11
Kretzmann and McKnight (1993).

20
partnerships actively welcomed Mexican immigrants as “full citizens” in community
planning processes. Formal legal standing in the United States was not required to
participate, and Mexican immigrants were not asked to show “green cards” when
participating. Instead of political rights, public-private partnership emphasized
“active” citizenship, which focused on belonging and identity, not political rights, as
the basis of being part of a city.
It was not difficult to see that these public-private partnerships were based on
a politically conservative ideology, which promoted individual responsibility,
increased voluntary sector involvement, minimal local government intervention in
community problems, and market-oriented solutions to address individual and
neighborhood problems. However, I remember harboring a slight hope that this new
form of local governance might eventually lead to greater grassroots capacity to
address underlying social, political, and economic inequalities. I thought that local
government’s investment in heightening the capacity of civil society might
eventually create a stronger organizational base within the Mexican immigrant
community from which to mount an urban movement addressing social inequality
through such policies as rent moratoria, livable wages, and citizenship campaigns,
among other things. Animating this hope were the methods used by public-private
partnerships to bring together groups traditionally at odds with each other, such as
business leaders and grassroots organizations. Through participatory dialogue, these
groups forged a common understanding of a problem and tapped into new resources
and commitments. These seemingly pragmatic, neutral, non-ideological, and task-

21
oriented deliberative processes seemed to unleash new resources from civil society,
including such actors as business owners, grassroots organizations, faith-based
institutions, and government agencies.
Multi-stakeholder consensus emerged prominently in two areas:
neighborhood self-reliance and workforce development. For example, after two
rounds of extensive community engagement and planning, the City of Santa Ana was
able to obtain a designation as a Federal Empowerment Zone in 1998. What were the
shared understanding and interests among the various actors? Business owners
needed access to a workforce with the skills that would help them become more
competitive; Mexican immigrants needed access to workforce development services
to obtain better paying jobs; and nonprofit organizations needed resources to provide
employment training services to immigrants. The three-way win-win arrangement
constitutes the basis of Santa Ana’s urban regime, which has incorporated nonprofit
organizations into the economic growth agenda of businesses and local government.

CAPTURING COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
Despite the growth of public-private partnerships and an emphasis on
grassroots capacity building throughout the late 1990s, Mexican immigrant political
participation never flowered in Santa Ana. Although the number of Latino elected
officials serving on the city council and school district board and in the state
assembly and U.S. Congress increased dramatically during these years, the
proportion of Mexican immigrant voters did not. With the exception of 1994-1996,

22
when formal citizenship and voter registration rates increased among Latinos in
Santa Ana,
12
low-income, working-class Mexican immigrants never became a
significant electoral bloc in local elections. By 2004, for instance, White residents,
12% of the population, constituted over 50% of the electorate, whereas Latino voters,
the city’s overwhelming demographic majority, constituted only slightly over 40%.
13

Moreover, in traditional ward-based systems, people residing within a particular
ward elect that ward’s representative, but in Santa Ana’s “at-large” local elections,
residents from high voter-turnout wards—the more affluent neighborhoods—
determine the results in low voter-turnout wards.
The weak electoral presence of Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana was
certainly disturbing, but it was even more troubling to see grassroots organizations
actively engage Mexican immigrants in deliberative forums, community planning
processes, and civic activities sponsored by public-private partnerships without
simultaneously mobilizing them in the political arena. Although grassroots
organizations were capable of opposing repressive local policies, they did not call
into question the political and economic interests that were behind partnerships, even
though these had a politically conservative goal. When it came to empowering
Mexican immigrant residents in terms of economic self-sufficiency and self-reliance,

12
DeSipio (2001) argues that the increase in voter registration and naturalization during the
1994-1996 period was not an entirely a local phenomenon. It was also due to Proposition 187, and it
was connected to specific timeframes with the Immigration and Reform Act of 1986, which stipulated
a certain number of years before people could become citizens.

13
This information comes from the Orange County Registrar of Voters, Hispanic Surname
Registered Voters, and through interviews with three elected officials.

23
grassroots organizations evidently found common ground with city government and
the business sector. Why would grassroots organizations want to resist an urban
regime that sought to empower immigrants by promoting self-reliance and self-
sufficiency? In some regards, the question itself was perceived as trivial.
By the late 1990s, the exclusion of Mexican immigrants from the formal
electoral system and the deep incorporation of the voluntary sector into the City’s
economic growth agenda made me turn my attention to public-private partnerships as
social networks and quasi-state mechanisms that significantly mediated the
relationship between Mexican immigrants and the local government. These quasi-
state and civil society networks had become increasingly important avenues through
which Mexican immigrants accessed resources from local government. They offered
Mexican immigrants more avenues for engaging local government than existed in the
formal political arena.
The participation of grassroots organizations in the City’s partnerships,
moreover, raised several questions about the political and economic interests being
served through the positive social construction of immigrants as economically self-
sufficient and self-reliant citizens—and, more broadly, about the role of the
empowerment process itself. Whose political-economic interests were being served
by defining Mexican immigrants in a positive light? If the empowerment process
was not challenging social inequality through social justice strategies or through the
political arena, why not simply dismiss it as a false form of empowerment?

24
Although my instinct was to think that public-private partnerships were
primarily benefiting business interests, and hence turning the urban regime’s
empowerment process into another example of ideological co-optation, I found
myself wrestling with the very concept of empowerment. First, as Louis DeSipio
(2001) argues, compared to all other immigrant groups, Mexican immigrants take
longer to become naturalized citizens—on average, sixteen years—and they tend to
be very young and poor—two factors that strongly predict low voter participation
rates. So, in a place like Santa Ana, empowerment would arguably take longer to
manifest in the political arena. Additionally, even if more of Santa Ana’s Mexican
immigrants obtained citizenship, they would have to overcome the unequal system of
ward elections, which favor affluent neighborhoods in citywide elections. So, in
short, was I looking in the right place for empowerment? Was it fair to use the
electoral arena as the primary gauge of community empowerment? Or, was it more
appropriate to examine the community empowerment at a more micro level, within
an organization or at the level of social networks of a particular neighborhood?
I began to examine the ways in which public-private partnerships structured
the empowerment process for residents and grassroots organizations. I discovered
that urban regime actors—through capacity building, technical assistance, and other
incentives—promoted a particular form of empowerment, a “developmental” form,
that is, one that is characterized by: (a) a focus on the individual; (b) investment in
building knowledge and skills in individuals; and (c) a definition of empowerment as
the degree to which those skills and knowledge help an individual master the

25
conditions that affect his or her daily life (Summerson 2003). Increasingly, this
model of empowerment also includes the nonprofit and voluntary sector as the
agents supporting this developmental process, especially in inner cities and cities at
the bottom of urban hierarchies (see Jessop 2002).
E. Summerson Carr (2003) contrasts the developmental model with a social
justice form of empowerment. It conceptualizes individuals as being part of social
groups that are positioned differentially across various intersecting social and
political hierarchies. Thus, the everyday conditions that individuals face are a
function of the various social and political hierarchies they inhabit as members of
different social groups. People who experience the social justice form of
empowerment can name these social and political hierarchies. Social justice
empowerment seeks to change these social and political hierarchies not only through
political engagement, but also by advancing social rights not only individuals but for
a group as a whole (Young 1990). Social justice empowerment leads to the
articulation of social rights that place demands on local governments to address the
needs of immigrants (see Marshall and Bottomore 1996).
Urban regimes use the developmental model to structure the community
empowerment process. Through public-private partnerships, these regimes offer
resources, technical assistance, capacity building resources, and other “selective
incentives” to grassroots organizations that use the developmental form of
empowerment. The incentives are both material in nature (funding for organizations
and tangible employment-related services for immigrant residents, such as job

26
training, job placement, vocational training, small business development, and so
forth) and highly symbolic (including such rewards as recognition and status in the
context of local civic and political networks).
Through these material and symbolic rewards, the urban regime is able to
connect the development form of empowerment with an ideal form of citizenship:
the “enterprising citizen.” Enterprising citizenship is not only the citizen who—as an
individual—is independent and deserving; enterprising citizenship is that system of
government, grassroots organizations, business leaders, and others who work
actively to produce the enterprising citizen. This enterprising citizenship, as the
underpinning of Santa Ana’s public-private partnerships, allows urban regime
members to mediate and structure the terms under which Mexican immigrants and
grassroots organizations belong to the city and the appropriate forms of individual
and collective action through which Mexican immigrants become members of the
city. Urban regimes, I contend, use the developmental model of empowerment and
enterprising citizenship to reshape the local state in support of a neoliberal political
agenda.

CHAPTER TOPICS
This dissertation develops and substantiates this argument in the next seven
chapters. In Chapter One, I critically review various literatures that focus on urban
governance and immigrant political agency (including those that deal with
globalization and transnational migration and immigrant political participation in

27
U.S. cities). Chapter Two explains the research design, methodology, and research
methods I used to carry out this study.
Chapters Three and Four describe how Santa Ana’s political and economic
elites and local government managers have developed public-private partnerships
focused on empowerment and the enterprising citizen. Chapter Three examines how
the City has promoted self-reliance by creating neighborhood associations and
incorporating nonprofit organizations. It also shows how this system of
neighborhood associations and grassroots agencies reinforces the power of affluent
neighborhoods and lends support to their gentrification projects, which seek to
contain or limit the presence of Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana.
Chapter Four documents how Santa Ana’s political elite and government
agencies have used the notion of the “enterprising citizen” to create a collaborative
relationship with the private, nonprofit, and voluntary sector under the banner of
individual economic self-sufficiency. It describes the multiple ways that urban
regime leaders have utilized federal and state funds to provide both workforce
coordination services (such as job training, employment referrals, and childcare) for
immigrants, and tax incentives for local businesses.
Chapter Five traces how a neighborhood movement used a social justice form
of empowerment to assert social rights and thereby make demands on the local
government. This led, among other things, to the building of a community center in
what was, for the most part, a politically and economically disenfranchised area of
the city. This chapter also documents how the urban regime used the discourse of

28
social self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency to incorporate this movement into
it pro-growth partnerships.
Chapter Six examines the ways in which a local nonprofit organization has
negotiated the developmental and social justice models of empowerment, through a
long-standing, intense, and sustained engagement with local government agencies. I
describe the emergence of a hybrid empowerment model and its contradictions,
which reveal the depth at which the neoliberal local state operates in civil society by
capturing the concept and practice of empowerment from within civil society.
Chapter Seven summarizes the key points of this study and provides a model
by which to understand the relationship between local governance, citizenship, and
empowerment. It seeks to explain the various ways in which urban regime actors
draw upon citizenship and empowerment to incorporate grassroots organizations
working with Mexican immigrants and to shape the local state. I also highlight the
implications of this study in terms of future work on urban governance and
citizenship as it relates to empowerment processes transpiring more generally in
inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies, and the possibilities of
challenging neoliberal policies.

29
CHAPTER ONE

Urban Governance and Immigrant Political Agency: The Neoliberal Local State,
Enterprising Citizenship, and Community Empowerment

The examination of Mexican immigrant empowerment in the context of
Santa Ana’s public-private partnerships called for a theoretical framework that could
integrate key insights on the state, citizenship, and empowerment from two academic
literatures—urban governance and immigrant political agency. These bodies of
scholarship have increasingly focused on how transformations to the state and
citizenship have reshaped empowerment in inner cities and cities at the bottom of
urban hierarchies. Each literature, however, arrives at a different conclusion.
The urban governance scholarship suggests that changes to the local state and
to citizenship are decreasing the capacity of marginalized populations, including
immigrants, to challenge neoliberal policies at the local level (Brenner and Theodore
2002; Goodwin and Painter 1996; Harvey 2005; Jessop 1997a; Jessop, Peck, and
Tickell 1999; Kearns 1995; Lauria 1999; MacLeod and Goodwin 1999). Immigrant
political agency scholars, on the other hand, generally argue that nation-state
restructuring and citizenship in the context of neoliberal economic globalization can
increase the capacity of immigrants to claim social rights and pressure local
government to address urban hardship (Castles and Davidson 2000; Glick-Schiller,
Basch, Szanton-Back 1995; Holston and Appadurai 1996, 2003; Ong 1999, 2006;

30
Sassen 1998, 2003, 2006; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Soysal 1994, 2000). In short,
while urban governance scholars fail to account for the various ways that immigrants
can draw on new citizenship practices to contest neoliberal policies at the local level,
immigrant political agency scholars fail to consider the ways in which local state
actors have increasingly incorporated grassroots organizations working with
immigrants into a neoliberal economic growth agenda that emphasizes community
empowerment.
To understand how immigrant empowerment occurs in the context of
transformations to the local state and citizenship—specifically, in the context of
public-private partnerships forged in second half of the 1990s in Santa Ana—I have
developed a theoretical framework that draws on these two literatures. From the
urban governance literature, I borrow the theory of the integral local state, which
underscores that the state and civil society mutually constitute each other. The state’s
neoliberal policies and institutional practices penetrate and configure civil society.
The integral local state theory allows us to see how the leadership in the urban
regime restructures local state policies and institutions to deepen a neoliberal
ideology within civil society.
Second, from the immigrant political agency scholarship, I use a theory of
citizenship that views it as more than a set of civil, political, and social rights
bestowed on people by nation-state actors. Citizenship is conceptualized as
membership in a community that is defined by a set of place-based social practices
unfolding through civic networks that shape who is a member of a city. Under

31
certain circumstances, these practices allow immigrants to “belong” to their city and
to engage in local politics despite not having full political rights. Finally, I expand on
the theory of empowerment in both literatures, viewing it as a process that can lead
to the formation of political subjects, but not necessarily political subjects with a
social-justice agenda. Empowerment processes can also be used by urban regime
leaders to incorporate grassroots organizations into the local economic growth
coalition and to form political subjects that support a neoliberal agenda.
In the case of Santa Ana, this theoretical framework helps reveal how the
urban regime leaders, relying on a discourse of empowerment, have restructured the
state to deepen neoliberal policies at the local level and to restructure civic networks
in order to create a specific type of political subject, the “enterprising citizen.”
The first section of this chapter reviews the urban governance literature,
emphasizing the work of urban political geographers. The second section reviews
two literatures related to immigrant political agency: the globalization and
transnational migration literature and the literature on immigrant political
participation in American cities. Throughout my analysis of both academic
literatures, I tease out how they conceptualize the empowerment process. The final
section provides a theoretical framework that integrates key insights from each
literature as it relates to the state, citizenship, and empowerment. That framework
was used to examine Mexican immigrant empowerment in the context of public-
private partnerships in Santa Ana, California.

32
URBAN GOVERNANCE: THE NEOLIBERAL LOCAL STATE AND
ENTERPRISING CITIZENSHIP
Since the early 1980s in both industrialized and developing countries,
scholars have documented the rise of new forms of urban governance to address
local social and economic problems (Hirst 2000; McCarney and Stren 2003; Peters
2000; Pierre 2000; Rhodes 2000; Sellers 2002; Stoker 2000). This urban governance
is characterized by the use of formal and informal partnerships between local
government agencies, businesses, and voluntary organizations working to address
urban problems. Most of these public-private partnerships focus on economic
growth, but some address social equity and environmental justice (Sellers 2002).
Through negotiations, networks, deliberative forums, and other types of
community consultation processes in the urban arena, these public-private
partnerships engage a diverse range of social and political actors, one that is broader
than traditional urban growth coalitions, which consist primarily of business firms,
labor unions, and local government representatives (Stoker 2000). These new forms
of social governance include nonprofit agencies, social entrepreneurs, neighborhood
associations, faith-based organizations, informal grassroots organizations, and other
voluntary sector groups. Gary Stoker (2000:8) believes, moreover, that local
government is the institutional level where different models of social governance
have been most discussed and tested: “It is in urban politics as an arena that public-
private exchange and cooperation seek to address urban institutional fragmentation.”

33
Many scholars view the proliferation of public-private partnerships as a sign
of the transformation of the state’s function vis-à-vis civil society. The state’s
purpose, especially since the early 1980s, has arguably shifted from a “steering” to a
“coordinating” function. The steering function of the state, which emerged
prominently after World War II in many industrialized countries, was carried out
primarily through nation-state actors, who used political brokerage to define
society’s goals and priorities (Hirst 2000; Peters 2000). Using hierarchical and
corporatist strategies, nation-state state actors forged agreements and compromises
among large corporations, big unions, and government agencies in pursuit of specific
national objectives, such as increased domestic employment and production. Since
the early 1980s, however, the steering function of the state seems to have given way
to a coordination function, whereby government agencies actively facilitate the
taking of decisions that are agreeable to various actors in civil society (Peters 2000).
The coordination function reveals a more society-centered state: its purpose is to
foster the capacity for self-governance by increasing the involvement of private- and
voluntary-sector actors to address urban problems and by reducing direct
governmental intervention (Rhodes 1997). Increasingly, local government
agencies—as opposed to nation-state actors operating via federal government
agencies—are carrying out more of this coordination work (Brenner and Theodore
2002).
Urban governance scholars have documented the key political trends,
demographic shifts, and economic conditions that have contributed to the

34
prominence of the local state in carrying out the new coordination role. Jeffrey
Sellers (2002) points out that decentralization processes have placed greater
mandates on local governments to address urban problems. At the same time, federal
and state governments have systematically decreased funding towards local
governments and siphoned a greater proportion of local taxes for federal and state
governments (Eisinger 1998; Peterson 1995). In this context, cities with limited tax
bases—particularly inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies—find
themselves in a weak fiscal position to fulfill increased federal and state mandates to
address urban problems.
On the demographic and economic side, low-income populations have
increasingly settled in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. A
disproportionate concentration of low-income populations imposes a greater demand
on public services, such as health, education, housing, and social services designed
to address daily hardships. Judd and Kantor (2002:202) explain: “The grim fiscal
realities of unbalanced budgets, the flight of middle-class taxpayers to suburbia, and
abandonment of central cities by state and federal governments are among the
constraints that discourage all mayors from mounting costly governmental offensive
to overcome innecity social problems.” The urban areas with large inner cities—the
very cities that wielded significant national political clout between 1945 and 1975—
have also seen their political influence wane on a national level, particularly as the
rise of neoconservative ideology gained hegemony throughout the 1980s and early
1990s (Judd and Kantor 2002; Waste 1998).

35
These decentralization, demographic, and economic trends place inordinate
fiscal pressures on local governments to address urban problems. Faced with having
to find resources to address local needs as federal and state support shrinks, local
government actors are pressured into becoming “entrepreneurial” by reaching out to
the private and voluntary sectors for assistance (Jessop 1997a). Partly because the
tax-and-spend model of the government has faced a crisis of legitimacy, making it
difficult to raise taxes, elected officials have had no choice but to turn to these
sectors (Peters 1996, 2000).
14

The steering function of the state is rooted in large part in a progressive tax
system that underpinned a redistributive function of government. In the United
States, particularly with President Ronald Reagan’s conservative administration
during the 1980s, “big government” (that is, government that relied on the tax-and-
spend model) was labeled as the underlying cause of urban problems. President
Reagan attacked the Welfare State on the grounds that it purportedly created
dependent populations in inner cities and constituted a drag on the economy and a
burden to taxpayers (Gray 1995). Moreover, government agencies were cast as
inherently less effective, efficient, and appropriate compared to private firms
working under a competitive market framework (Schneider and Ingram 1997).
Private organizations were viewed as more efficient, effective, and appropriate
vehicles to address urban problems, leading to calls for increased privatization of

14
In developing countries, the state was perceived as illegitimate because it was viewed as
“captured by commercial interests, corrupt politicians, and unaccountable bureaucracies” (Hirst
2001:13).

36
public agencies. The ongoing discrediting of the tax-and-spend government model
has created a formidable political resistance to new extensions of the Welfare State.
The shift towards a society-centered state that coordinates actions among
private and voluntary organizations, however, has not necessarily led to a less
interventionist state. Instead, it has engendered new extensions of the state and
reproduced some of the inefficiencies attributed to big government. Jon Pierre (1998,
1999, 2001) shows that while privatization sought to limit the scope of the Welfare
State by reducing the services it directly provided, these market-based approaches
have triggered new state regulations and monitoring strategies. Market-based
approaches make the delivery of public services more complex by introducing new
commercial practices and management styles within the public and nonprofit sectors
(Pierre 2001). By devolving services to agencies that are self-managing within
overall policy guidelines and service targets, these commercial and management
practices have forced public agencies to develop new regulatory and organizational
strategies to protect the interests of service recipients. These strategies include rules
about service quality, supervision through service contracts, regular program and
financial audits, and program evaluation to monitor service providers and to ensure
service quality and compliance with contracts.
In addition, Paul Hirst (2001) argues, the move towards private and voluntary
organizations has also produced larger private and nonprofit agencies and the
attendant problems endemic to larger organizations. As private and nonprofit
agencies become bureaucracies, they tend to focus on self-preservation instead of the

37
interests of service recipients and tend to become less democratic in their decision-
making practices. The political resistance to new extensions of the tax-and-spend
model of government will likely make these new forms of urban governance
enduring institutions in the urban political landscape (Hirst 2001; Stoker 2000).
How are these new extensions of the state justified? Two theories seek to
explain the local state’s transformation from a steering to a coordinating function.
The first, what I call the “weak local state theory,” embodies the dominant
justification for these new neoliberal extensions of the state. Indeed, this view of how
the state should govern is so hegemonic that it often goes unquestioned. In reading
the urban governance literature, I found that I had to tease out the theory since those
scholars did not feel compelled to explicitly identify the weak local state or to
distinguish between the local state and the local government. My theory of the weak
local state has three core elements. First, it interprets the increase in the state’s
coordination function as a transferring of power from the state to civil society,
arguing that as the local state retreats from a steering function, civil society becomes
stronger. As Hirst argues (2001), the rise and proliferation of public-private
partnerships presumably signal heightened citizen participation in local policy
making and increased local government accountability.
Secondly, the weak local state theory depends heavily on a neo-
communitarian philosophy, inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville’s work on the central
role of voluntary associations in American democracy. It assumes that ordinary
citizens and voluntary associations are the central agents of a democratic society and

38
hence best suited to solve the community’s problems. This neo-communitarian view
provides a normative justification for the weak local state: the state should be weak
in relation to civil society in a democratic context. From this normative angle, civil
society should always be stronger than the local government, because it is the
responsibility mainly of individuals and voluntary associations to solve local
problems.
Encroaching on the responsibilities of individuals and civil society, according
to weak state theory, only enervates the capacity for self-governance, and hence
undermines the very foundations of a democratic society. Local state involvement in
solving community problems putatively disempowers individuals and voluntary
associations in civil society. Authors who accept the theory of the weak local state
presuppose a split between the state and civil society, and they advocate for
decreasing the state’s role in the lives of individuals and civil society, including the
use of market-based models to substitute for a withdrawal of government financial
support to address social problems.
Thirdly, despite opposing state intervention in civil society, the weak local
state theory does justify some types of state involvement over others, particularly
state interventions that seek to increase the capacity for self-governance. The neo-
communitarian philosophy, for instance, has shaped the development of public
service models proliferating across a number of policy fields. Archon Fung (2004a,
2004b) documents a pattern of “empowered deliberative participation,” whereby
public service administrators devolve as much institutional power as possible to

39
grassroots groups in the design and implementation of local policy making,
especially in the fields of education and police-community relations (see Lasker and
Weiss [2003] for examples of how this neo-communitarian approach has fostered
cross-institutional collaboration initiatives, such as Comprehensive Community
Initiatives and Healthy Communities).
Weak local state theory can be seen operating in a variety of practices within
the field of public administration. As Rhodes (1997: 48-60) points out, the neo-
communitarian strand of this weak local state theory framework has been at the heart
of new public service models that promote self-governance while decreasing state
dependence. These models are contrasted with older models of public administration,
which relied on hierarchical control, answerable only to elected officials, and
allegedly fostered state dependency in inner city populations. These new public
service approaches, in particular, rearticulate the relationship between “clients” and
“service providers.” Clients are considered “customers” or “citizens” with the right
to demand high quality services from service providers (Pierre, 1998). Rearticulating
the relationship between customers/citizens and service providers is supposed to
foster active citizenship, increased local government accountability, and hence
greater local democracy.
Perhaps the most influential approach that follows a weak local state theory is
John McKnight and John Kretzman’s neo-communitarian Asset-Based Community
Development (ABCD). This approach emerged in the field of community
development but has influenced other fields (Minkler 1997). McKnight and

40
Kretzman believe that Welfare State government programs are geared towards
identifying needs and deficits in marginalized communities. In so doing, these
Welfare State programs socially construct these marginalized communities as places
riddled with needs and bereft of any assets. This negative social construction of
communities, they argue, justifies the intervention of professionals as the agents of
change. By fostering reliance on professionals, this needs-based model decreases the
capacity of communities to make changes on their own. McKnight and Kretzman
propose viewing marginalized communities as sites of assets and resources,
particularly individuals with talents and voluntary associations.
15
From their
perspective, the role of government is to build the capacity of individuals and
voluntary associations to be self-reliant, especially through the development of social
capital or trust among various actors internal and external to the community. In short,
government agencies can and should intervene in civil society but only to promote
self-reliance and empowerment, not to breed dependence and disempowerment.
Urban political geographers, however, have been critical of the urban
governance literature based on a weak local state theory, particularly its neo-
communitarian underpinnings (Jessop 2002), and they have instead proposed
“integral local state” theory to explain the new coordination role of the local state.
Integral local state theory underscores the state’s mutual constitution with civil

15
The ABCD model is based on a social constructionist approach that argues that how we
define a population will shape how this population will be treated. It also has a neo-communitarian
philosophy, as it draws from de Tocqueville’s work on individuals and voluntary associations as the
key agents of democracy. The social constructionist aspect of ABCD is similar to Schneider and
Ingram’s social constructionist approach to citizenship.

41
society and the state’s connection to the dominant neoliberal political-ideological
rationality. Unlike the weak local state theory, this integral local state theory does not
assume that the state and civil society are separate entities (Brenner, Jessop, Jones,
and MacLeod 2003). This theory argues that the presence of the state in modern
societies does not increase, decrease, or disappear. The modern state, as Phillip
O’Neill (1997, 2003:258) argues, is involved in each and every step of the
accumulation process: “capitalism is incapable of operation outside the realm of the
state.” For instance, the state is necessary in order to secure property rights,
management of territorial boundaries, legal frameworks to maximize economic
cooperation, projects to ensure social cooperation, provision of basic infrastructure,
creation of governance of financial markets, production and reproduction of labor,
control of macroeconomic trends through fiscal and monetary policies, and a variety
of legitimizing activities, such as the elimination of poverty, maintenance of public
health, citizenship rights, income and wealth redistribution, and urban and regional
development, among other things (O’Neill 1997, 2003). Instead, integral state theory
argues that political actors transform the state qualitatively to achieve specific goals.
Thus, integral state theory seeks to understand, trace, and critique the ways in which
civil and political actors use the state apparatus—as Michael Mann (1988, 2003)
argues—to penetrate civil society to implement dominant political ideologies.
Using an integral state theory approach, urban political geographers view the
rise of urban governance as the re-assertion of the local state in civil society as a
means for deepening a neoliberal political ideology among business owners,

42
nonprofit leaders, voluntary association actors, elected officials, and other members
of civil society. Neil Brenner Nik Theodore (2002) generally interpret the rise of
urban governance as a new way to pressure and persuade civil society actors to
espouse and adapt a neoliberal political rationality to a local framework. Following
Bob Jessop (2002), most critical urban political geographers define a neoliberal
political rationality along six lines: (1) promoting free competition—liberalization;
(2) reducing the role of the state in economic transactions—deregulation; (3) selling
off the public sector—privatization; (4) getting the public sector to function like the
private sector—market proxies; (5) promoting free inward and outward flow of
capital—internationalization; and (6) increasing consumer choice—via low direct
taxes. This neoliberal political rationality, in other words, promotes decreased state
involvement in redistributive politics. Jessop (2002) argues that this neoliberal
political rationality is part of a dominant regime of capital accumulation he calls the
Schumpeterian Postnational Workfare Regime.
The critical urban governance scholarship has identified two phases of local
state restructuring over the past thirty years that have deepened a neoliberal political
logic in local institutions. Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002) call these two phases
the “roll-back” and “roll-out” stages of neoliberal economic and state restructuring.
During the roll-back stage, which corresponded with the administrations of Prime
Minister Thatcher and President Reagan during the 1980s, the thrust of the
restructuring process was focused on destroying Welfare State institutions. This
attack was carried out primarily at the nation-state level through draconian cuts to

43
Welfare State budgets and through highly restrictive eligibility criteria (Peck and
Tickell 2002). The function of urban governance during this the roll-back stage was
mainly to manage urban crises—or as Stuart Hall (1978) puts it, “policing the
crisis”—resulting from the severe budgetary curtailments of Welfare State agencies
and highly restrictive eligibility criteria placed on poor people.
Peck and Tickell (2002) maintain that managing the urban crises during the
roll-back stage required two interlocking strategies: (a) establishing local public-
private partnerships to legitimize budgetary cuts; and (b) redefining citizenship to
reduce or eliminate the state’s responsibility to protect social rights. The proliferation
of local public-private partnerships, political geographers argued, did not constitute
new forms of bottom-up democracy. Instead, these partnerships only selectively
included community organizations, shaped by the patronage of new federal, state,
and local state regulators. The participation of marginalized communities in these
public-private partnerships was often legitimized public sector retrenchment
initiatives, but these communities had minimal influence on decision-making
processes (Peck and Tickell 1994; Raco, Nevin, and Shiner 1994). Although public-
private partnerships mobilized disenfranchised populations, they also depoliticized
the local decision-making processes by focusing on developing consensus within the
technical policy frameworks and agendas established by central government. This
narrow, technical focus restricted broader political debate and critical views
(Colenutt and Cutten 1994). Thus, instead of challenging local growth coalitions,
communities involved in public-private partnerships ended up supporting—or at

44
least not impeding—strategies designed to justify the reduction of public funds (see
Wolch 1989).
The restructuring of the local state during the roll-back stage also entailed a
redefinition of citizenship that would support the ideology behind the reduction in
the state’s responsibility to protect social rights. As the basis for a number of
entitlement programs that emerged as part of the Welfare State in the post World
War II era, social rights—as distinct from civil and political rights—helped justify
the provision of basic levels of social and economic support to lower income
communities (Castles and Davidson 2000; Marshall and Bottomore 1996). Based on
the recognition that citizens have unequal access to resources, social rights entitled
citizens to a certain amount of social support (such as education, employment,
housing, and other services) in order to fully exercise their civil and political rights.
Social rights were fundamental to expanding a democratic society (Marshall and
Bottomore 1996). While marginalized citizens may have “formal citizenship” (civil
and political rights), they lack the capacity to exercise these rights (in the sense of
not having “substantive citizenship” to claim their civil and political rights). Indeed,
Stephen Castles and Alistair Davidson (2000) use the term “welfare citizenship,”
16

which signals the strong association between the Welfare State and social rights
guaranteed at the nation-state level, to refer broadly to a practice of citizenship that
asserts social rights and supports a politics of income redistribution, whereby

16
Castles and Davidson (2000) use the term “welfare citizenship” to refer to a particular
relationship between citizenship, social rights, and nation-states—and the Keynesian Welfare
National State.

45
government functions as an instrument correcting various forms of social, political,
and economic inequality.
The attack on the Welfare State during the 1980s and early 1990s was
simultaneously an attack on welfare citizenship and social rights. According to Ade
Kearns (1995), the dismantling process required the production of an “active
citizenship” that aggressively discredited entitlement programs and attacked social
rights. Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (1994), who argued that the increase in local
community participation was linked to wider neoliberal objectives, documented the
promotion of idealized “active citizens” at the local level. These active citizens were
defined as self-reliant individuals, those who did not depend on the Welfare State
(Kearns 1995; Cochrane 1999; Lovering 1995). Active citizenship required the
individual to earn his or her social rights through a web of mutual obligations and
responsibilities in a local community; social rights were not entitlements guaranteed
by the nation-state.
17
The promotion of active citizenship was an attempt to
normalize social rights as contingent, flexible rights secured at the local level and
based on an individual’s capacity to generate support and mutual obligations in a
local community.
The roll-back stage of neoliberal state and economic restructuring, however,
was not fully implemented in its extreme form. This was due mainly to a
combination of national and local resistance and outright failures during the early to

17
This “active citizenship,” as Nakano-Glenn (2002) points out, is related to a Jeffersonian
republicanism ethos: social rights have to be earned through a web of obligations and responsibilities;
individuals have to earn their social rights in proportion to their contributions to a community.

46
mid 1990s (Peck and Tickell 2002)
18
. In the context of the United States, the Savings
and Loan industry debacle, which culminated with the conviction of Charles Keating
in 1993, highlighted the failure of deregulation, and the Los Angeles riots, in April
1992, underscored the failure of the trickle-down theory. The failures of the roll-back
phase, however, did not lead to the death of neoliberal ideology; instead, the failures
triggered a reinvention of neoliberal discourse and strategies.
Peck and Tickell (2002) believe that the reinvention of neoliberal discourse
and strategies led to the “roll-out” phase of state and economic restructuring.
Corresponding with the administrations of President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister
Tony Blair, it emphasized an institution-building approach, especially at the local
level. At this point, the idea was not to continue with the destruction of the Welfare
State but to transform those institutions into ones that promoted a neoliberal political
logic.
A key example is the Welfare Reform Act of 1996,
19
which various scholars
identify as the formal shift toward “workfare” policies. Based on the concept of
“sweat equity,” workfare policies emphasized entrepreneurship, whereby individuals
have to earn the benefits they receive. Benefits are no longer permanent entitlements
secured at the nation-state level, but temporary assistance obtained at the local level.

18
This includes the Los Angeles civil uprisings, which questioned the effectiveness of the
trickle-down theory; or the Savings and Loan bankruptcy, which questioned the merits of
deregulation.

19
The official title of this act is the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, Pub.L. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105, enacted 1996-08-22).

47
Individuals have to use this temporary assistance during their transition into the
formal labor market, where they will presumably find permanent employment and
wages that will make them economically self-sufficient. The federal government,
moreover, devolved responsibility to the states to provide these workfare services;
and the states in turn devolved responsibility to local governments. At the local level,
county and city government managers formed public-private partnerships to involve
the business community and nonprofit organizations in coordinating job training and
placement services to move “welfare recipients” into the labor market.
20

The roll-out phase deepened the use of a neo-communitarian discourse linked
to a neoliberal political rationality emphasizing individual responsibility. In the
United States, the neo-communitarian aspect of the roll-out phase is clear in Hillary
Clinton’s popular slogan, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” This slogan
embodied President Clinton’s search for a “Third Way,” which attempted to shift
responsibility for addressing community problems from government to civil society.
Importantly, Clinton’s “Third Way” did not seek to create new extensions of the tax-
and-spend model of government. Instead, the “Third Way” sought to expand and
deepen the responsibility of addressing urban problems from individuals to civil
society, both the private and voluntary sectors. The neo-communitarian philosophy
does not so much undermine neo-liberal policies, whereby individuals are
responsible for picking themselves up by their own means, but it expands this

20
This also includes Federal Empowerment Zones, which target economically disadvantaged
places by coordinating health and human services to create enterprising subjects, who enter the labor
force in support of local economic development.

48
responsibility to include the individual and the community, while absolving
government of its responsibility for addressing social inequality (Young 1990).
The effects of workfare policies linked to a neo-communitarian philosophy
were particularly noticeable in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban
hierarchies, because those places are often less competitive economically than
suburban communities. In those cities, public-private partnerships tended to draw
upon a neo-communitarian philosophy to emphasize the voluntary sector’s role in
economic development efforts (Jessop 2002). Urban governance in these places also
tended to use an empowerment discourse as a way of creating economically self-
sufficient individuals, or entrepreneurial subjects, who do not depend on government
funds. Citizens were cast as social entrepreneurs, developing “social capital,” which
can be mobilized in times of trouble.
The relationship between a neo-communitarian discourse, empowerment, and
individual self-sufficiency is clear in Jessop’s (2002:463) statement:
[Neo-communitarian governance] emphasizes the contribution of the third
sector or the social economy to economic development and social cohesion,
as well as the role of grassroots (or bottom up) economic and social
mobilization in developing and implementing economic strategies. It
emphasizes the link between economic and community development, notably
in empowering citizens and community groups; the contribution that greater
self-sufficiency can make to reinserting marginalized local economics into the
wider economy; and the role of decentralized partnerships that embrace not
only the state and business interests but also diverse community
organizations and other local stakeholders (emphasis mine).

The roll-out stage of neoliberal restructuring raises an important question
about the function of citizenship: What is its role in inner cities and cities at the

49
bottom of urban hierarchies in the roll-out stage? Two interconnected hypotheses
that follow from the work cited above help to answer that question. The first is that
the local institution-building activities of roll-out neoliberalism require more than the
active citizenship of the roll-back phase. During the roll-back stage, the concept of
active citizenship was used to discredit welfare citizenship by undermining social
rights through an attack on entitlements, by promoting the idea that social rights had
to be earned at the local level, and by emphasizing that the state should not be
involved in redistributive policies addressing social inequality. The roll-out stage
goes even further, by producing the entrepreneurial subject, or what I call the
“enterprising citizen,” who is characterized by self-reliance and economic self-
sufficiency. The enterprising citizen participates in the construction of the workfare
system at the local level by actively seeking to legitimize the local government’s
“entrepreneurial” function: the role of the local state is to support business
competitiveness in the context of a global economy. Enterprising citizens promote
local government’s role in coordinating the emergent workfare policies and
providing corporate tax incentives to bolster business competitiveness in a global
economy.
The second hypothesis pertaining to citizenship in the roll-out phase of
neoliberal restructuring is that urban regimes use the concept of empowerment to
produce enterprising citizens. More specifically, local government managers and
political elites use public-private partnerships that reach into the voluntary and
private sectors to structure an empowerment process that provides material and

50
symbolic support to grassroots organizations and marginalized communities in order
to entice them to join the economic growth coalition. Urban regime leaders use a
“developmental” form of empowerment, which as E. Summerson Carr (2003)
explains, focuses primarily on individuals, through skill building and knowledge
development. This development empowerment model, however, does not help
political subjects question social inequality or unequal power relations.
Although I agree with these two hypotheses, it is hard to apply them to
Mexican immigrants involved in public-private partnerships because they do not take
into consideration the possibility that immigrants might use citizenship and
empowerment processes to contest the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and
the local state. One of the weaknesses of the critical urban governance literature is
that it does not examine the extent to which immigrants can mobilize to question
social inequality by claiming their social rights and pressuring the local government
into a redistributive role. This gap exists because this literature fails to consider the
contested nature of citizenship and empowerment, particularly for immigrant and
marginalized communities in urban areas. As Evelyn Nakano-Glenn (2002) points
out, citizenship has a dual valence: it can serve both to reinforce unequal power
relations around gender, class, and race, and to question and challenge these unequal
power relations.
The failure of urban political geographers to empirically study how
immigrant communities in inner cities in the United States assert their citizenship
through a local community empowerment process is a particularly noticeable

51
oversight for several reasons. First, immigrants have become a substantial proportion
of the residents of inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. Secondly,
these individuals—as undocumented residents, refugees, legal residents, or
naturalized citizens—have complex experiences relative to formal modes of
citizenship. As will be explained in the next section, these complex experiences are
also a function of nation-state restructuring in the context of economic globalization.
Nation-states have increasingly lost their exclusive, sovereign hold on different
aspects of citizenship, which adds further complexity to immigrant’s sense of
belonging and identity. The next section describes the various ways that citizenship
and nation-state restructuring affect the empowerment of immigrants in large urban
areas.

IMMIGRANT POLITICAL AGENCY: DENATIONALIZED LOCAL
CITIZENSHIP AND A PROGRESSIVE POLITICS
The development of immigrant political agency in large urban areas is a
central concern for critical scholars of globalization and transnational migration and
scholars of immigrant political participation in U.S. cities. These scholars have
increasingly focused on the dynamic relationship between place and citizenship to
understand the extent to which immigrants can develop a progressive political
agenda that reclaims social rights and limits the rights of capital in the context of
neoliberal economic globalization (Castles and Davidson 2000; Ong 1999, 2006;
Sassen 1998, 2005; Smith and Guarnizo 1998). Saskia Sassen (1998, 2005), whose

52
views have deeply influenced the globalization and transnational migration
scholarship, believes that transnational migrants can develop a progressive politics in
global cities, those that form a worldwide network anchoring the circulation of
global capital and serving as nodes for transnational labor migration circuits. This
progressive politics is a function of two simultaneous and intersecting processes: the
denationalization of urban spaces and the destabilization of a nation-based
citizenship.
The denationalization of urban spaces is most evident in global cities that are
heavily shaped by global capital and transnational labor networks (Sassen 1998).
These urban spaces are highly contested: they are used by transnational corporations
to create favorable conditions for capital accumulation, but they are also used by
immigrant actors to develop a progressive politics. Sassen (1998: xx-xxi) explains:
The city has indeed emerged as a site for new claims: by global capital which
uses the city as an “organizational commodity,” but also by disadvantaged
sectors of the urban population, which in large cities are frequently as
internationalized a presence as is capital….Both find in the global city a
strategic site for their economic and political operations.

These denationalized urban spaces, in particular, are special sites where transnational
migrants and other disadvantaged communities can emerge as political subjects:
The global city is a strategic site for disempowered actors because it enables
them to gain presence, to emerge as subjects, even when they do not gain
direct power. Immigrants, women, African Americans in U.S. cities, people
of color, oppressed minorities emerge as significant subjects in ways they are
unlikely to do in a suburban context or small town (Sassen 1998: xx).

53
One of the reasons that these groups can emerge as political subjects in these
spaces is that their citizenship is not tied exclusively to the nation-state. Sassen
(1998:xxi) argues that “many of the disadvantaged workers in global cities are
women, immigrants, and people of color, whose political sense of self and whose
identities are not necessarily embedded in the ‘nation’ or the ‘national community’”
(see also Castles and Davidson [2000] and Soysal [1994] on post-national
citizenship). According to Sassen (2005), from the late nineteenth century and
throughout the twentieth century, nation-states became the central political-legal
institution that bundled together three distinct aspects of citizenship: belonging,
identity, and rights. The nation-state building efforts since the 1800s created a
regime whereby citizenship meant “belonging” to a nation-state, not just a city or
local community or to another nation-state. Citizenship also meant having a national
“identity” not just an ethnic or place-based identity. And, in the context of liberal
democracies, citizenship meant possessing civil and political “rights” equal to other
citizens within a defined territory. With the rise of the Keynesian Welfare State after
World War II in industrialized countries, moreover, citizens also acquired “social”
rights, secured as entitlements at the nation-state level (Jessop 2002; Sassen 2003).
From Sassen’s perspective (2006), the rise of economic globalization has
undermined the nation-state’s capacity to hold all three aspects of citizenship. Sassen
believes that the restructuring of nation-states into supra-national states, like the
European Union, Mercosur, or the North American Free Trade Area, that facilitate
the flow of goods and financial capital in the global economy has destabilized the

54
bundling of belonging, identity, and rights at the nation-state level. This
destabilization is evident in the emergence of two types of citizenship: post-national
and denationalized citizenship.
21
Post-national citizenship, for instance, is legible in
the emergence of an international human rights regime and other global mechanisms,
such as the World Trade Organization (see also Glick-Schiller, Basch, Szanton-Back
1995; Soysal 1994). The human rights regime, in particular, transcends and at times
challenges the nation-state’s sovereignty over rights. According to Sassen, this
enables transnational migrants to be subjects with human rights even when they are
not residing within the borders of their own nation-state.
In addition to a human rights regime, post-national citizenship is also visible
in the emergence of transnational migrant political subjects who have developed a
political identity that cuts across various national identities. In their work on
“transnationalism from below,” Smith and Guarnizo (1998) show that transnational
migrant political actors are able to engage in grassroots political struggles spanning
two nations, largely because they have developed a highly situated, trans-local
identity that is not exclusively embedded in one nation-state. This binational identity
helps transnational migrant political actors to contest oppressive class, racial, or
gender formations that are differentially articulated in each nation-state (see Fox and
Rivera-Salgado [2005] for a discussion on indigenous migrants from Mexico).

21
Both types of citizenship can coexist and result from different ways in which belonging,
identity, and rights are being articulated.

55
The destabilizing of nation-state citizenship is also evident in denationalized
citizenship. In contrast to a post-national citizenship, denationalized citizenship does
not focus so much on the emergence of international human rights regimes or
people’s movements across national borders. Instead, denationalized citizenship
refers to the ways in which belonging, identity, and rights within a particular country
no longer depend on the nation-state as much as they did before. For example, as a
result of the neoliberal restructuring of the nation-state, fewer social rights are
secured at the national level via entitlements. The local state—as urban governance
scholars note—is increasingly responsible for addressing urban problems, and civil
society is viewed as the agent to address hardship. Thus, urban populations
increasingly attempt to secure social rights at the sub-national level, through state,
county, or city government, and through non-state avenues, that is, through civil
society. Sassen contends that under the conditions of a denationalized citizenship,
immigrants, despite not having full social, political, and legal rights secured at the
nation-state level, are able to assert social rights at the local level and force local
governments to address urban hardship—a denationalized local citizenship.
Larger cities, or cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies, are places that
generate new possibilities for belonging, identity, and social rights because the
pronounced levels of social inequality in larger cities tend to animate “active

56
citizenship”
22
among immigrants and disenfranchised communities (Holston and
Appadurai 1999, 2003). According to Holston and Appadurai (1999, 2003), through
an “active citizenship” that engages grassroots organizations and mobilizes broader
place-based civic and political networks, immigrants can assert their social right to
affordable housing, quality education, and other services. Through an urban
movement in civil society, immigrants can place great pressure on urban regime
leaders to respond to these claims. According to Sassen (2006), immigrants can take
advantage of denationalized local citizenship to organize an empowerment process
that increases the local state’s responsibility to address urban hardship Indeed, she
claims that immigrants can use the empowerment process to claim ownership over
the city itself: “The denationalizing of urban space and the formation of new claims
by transnational actors and involving contestation, raise the question—whose city is
it?” (1998: xxi).
In the context of the United States, Flores and Benmayor’s (1997) work on
Latino cultural citizenship supports Sassen’s hypothesis. They find that Latino
immigrants can use informal social spaces and social networks to acquire social
rights at the local level. Latino immigrants engage in a cultural citizenship that
claims membership in local institutions (such as faith institutions and schools) and
other social spaces (such as neighborhoods). In this process, immigrants become
embedded in social networks that include obligations and responsibilities, and the

22
Their use of active citizenship does not entirely coincide with the ways in which active
citizenship was used as part of urban governance and public-private partnerships in the roll-back stage
of neoliberal restructuring.

57
process of claiming membership to these local communities does not entail losing
ethnic or national identity. Indeed, Latino immigrants can use this cultural
citizenship (or what Sassen calls denationalized local citizenship) to launch an
empowerment process that supports a politically progressive agenda. William Flores
(1997) documents how Mexican immigrants and Chicanos together challenged
government regulations requiring a local health clinic to document the legal status of
its customers in predominantly Mexican immigrant neighborhood in San Jose,
California.
However, despite the immigrant political agency literature’s insights on
place, citizenship, and empowerment, this scholarship does not adequately
understand the relationship between immigrant empowerment in the context of new
forms of urban governance. First, these scholars tend to view the local level without
taking into consideration the presence of the local state. Although both the post-
national and denationalized forms of citizenship operate at the local and trans-local
level, the local state is largely absent in the analysis of the process of empowerment.
For instance, most of Sassen’s views on the state focus on nation-state restructuring
in terms of an upward shift from the nation-state to the supra-national state. She does
not theorize about a process in the opposite direction—the nation-state restructuring
towards the local level. Leaving that out is a major gap because the cities that many
immigrant political agency scholars study are precisely those that have experimented
the most with new forms of urban governance and the neoliberal restructuring of the
local state.

58
The second gap in the immigrant political agency literature is that it fails to
conceptualize how the state actively intervenes in civil society. It does not take an
integral-state-theory approach to understand how urban regime leaders use the local
state to intervene in civil society. Indeed, the theories about how immigrants take
advantage of a post-national or denationalized citizenship often define the state as a
necessarily repressive apparatus, not an agent of (neoliberal) empowerment. Thus,
the purpose of immigrant empowerment process is not only to name social inequality
but also to require greater state involvement in redistributive policies. This
conception of empowerment fails to recognize that in urban areas with large inner
cities and in cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies, urban regime leaders have
formed public-partnerships that engage grassroots organizations working with
marginalized communities and that use community empowerment techniques to
incorporate those communities into the economic growth agenda.
One notable exception to the tendency to conceptualize the state as being
outside of civil society is Aihwa Ong’s (1999, 2006) theory of “flexible citizenship.”
Flexible citizenship is based on a theory of governmentality, which refers to the
“deployment of modern forms of (nonrepressive) disciplining power by the state—
especially in the bureaucratic realm—and other kinds of institutions that produce
rules based on knowledge/power about populations” (Ong 1999:265). In this regard,
citizenship includes as set of requirements in which “the state regulates the conduct
of subjects as a population (by age, ethnicity, occupation, and so on) and as
individuals (sexual and reproductive behavior) so as to ensure security and prosperity

59
for a nation as a whole” (Ong 1999:120). Ong’s work documents the ways in which
political elites and state actors use sub-national spaces to create regimes of unequal
citizenship in post-development countries. In “zones of graduated sovereignty,”
nation-state actors and political elites give more rights to transnational corporations
than to national subjects who work in these spaces. In these zones of graduated
sovereignty, nation-state actors not only provide tax incentives, land, and other
physical infrastructure to transnational corporations to bolster the economy, but they
also relax many of their labor enforcement powers, particularly those related to the
regulation of worker protections. The existence of zones of graduated sovereignty
demonstrates that transnational corporations need geographically specific regimes of
unequal citizenship that privilege the rights of capital for the purposes of capital
accumulation in a world economy. By showing that political actors actively forge
regimes of unequal citizenship, Ong’s “flexible citizenship” underscores the
importance of examining how political elites and state actors manipulate citizenship,
for regimes of unequal citizenship are key aspects of a state apparatus that helps
secure the conditions of capital accumulation.
Unfortunately, Ong’s flexible citizenship theory has a number of limitations
related to understanding how political elites, state actors, and transnational migrants
engage each other at the local level in the United States. First, Ong focuses on
transnational migrants who are highly skilled or who have capital to invest abroad
rather than those working in de-skilled sectors of the economy. Secondly, the notion
of zones of graduated sovereignty focuses on native workers in post-development

60
countries, not on foreign-born workers in highly industrialized countries. Finally, she
does not focus on the local state per se or on the proliferation of public-private
partnerships. Nevertheless, Ong’s notion of flexible citizenship, underpinned by a
theory of governmentality, offers a critical framework for examining how local state
actors utilize public-private partnerships to establish a code of conduct for
immigrants: immigrants are supposed to act as self-reliant and self-sufficient
subjects, in accordance with neoliberal ideology.
The immigrant political agency scholarship cannot help us understand how
urban regimes relate to grassroots organizations and immigrants through public-
private partnerships. It cannot explain Mexican immigrant empowerment in the
context of public-private partnerships in urban areas. There are two sides to this
problem. On the one hand, it cannot explain how urban regimes use the local state to
promote immigrant empowerment. It assumes that empowerment is about
immigrants contesting, rather than supporting, neoliberal political ideology. On the
other hand, this literature generally assumes that grassroots organizations have the
same interests as the disadvantaged populations they represent, supporting a
politically progressive agenda, not a neoliberal politics. It does not consider that the
urban regime’s material and symbolic incentives may entice grassroots organizations
to join an economic growth coalition rooted in neoliberal ideology and policies.

61
The literature on immigrant political participation in American cities,
23

however, contributes two important insights about the relationship between urban
regimes and grassroots organizations as it relates to immigrant mobilization at the
local level. The first is that urban regimes play a central role in organizing the formal
and informal civic and political networks through which grassroots organizations and
other groups gain access to the local state. Urban regimes consist of formal and
informal arrangements among business elites (those individuals who are rentiers, or
who control companies in the commercial or high-tech sectors, for instance), elected
officials, local government actors, civic leaders, unions (in the industrial and service
sectors), and, increasingly, nonprofit organizations (Elkin 1987; Logan and Molotch
1987; Sellers 2002; Stone 1989). Urban regimes, moreover, play a central role in
mediating and shaping the development of local state policies, and they are
especially biased toward economic growth.
The second insight of this literature is that by using exclusion or
incorporation, urban regimes tend to control the emergence of local political
agendas. According to Jones-Correa (1998, 2001), urban regimes strongly exclude
immigrants. After building an electoral power base, local political machines are not
inclined to mobilize new voting constituencies, such as immigrants (Jones-Correa
1998, 2001, 2002). In general, these regimes have a tendency to monopolize social
and political power by manipulating, among other things, electoral rules,

23
This literature intersects with the urban politics and racial politics in urban cities.

62
incumbency, and the boundaries of wards (Erie 2002). However, another way that
urban regimes shape the emergence of local political agendas is by incorporating
new members into the dominant economic growth agenda. Indeed, this is perhaps the
hallmark of an urban regime: operating through a social production model of power,
urban regimes use selective incentives to actively incorporate, rather than exclude,
actors (Stone 1989). Incorporation is particularly noticeable with constituencies that
are heavily politically disenfranchised (that is, those groups that have few voting-age
naturalized citizens in their ranks) and can take the form of co-optation through a
politics of clientelism and patronage (Regalado 1998; see McCarney and Shren for a
discussion on urban governance and clientilism and patronage in Latin American
cities).
The immigrant political participation literature distinguishes at least three
avenues by which immigrant incorporation occurs in urban areas. The first is class-
based. Jaime Regalado (1998), who studies the politics of incorporation of Latino
communities in Los Angeles, argues that urban regimes tend to absorb the economic
elite of an ethnic population, and in this way, those elites create a buffer between
themselves and working-class immigrants.
A second type of incorporation, as described by DeSipio (2001), is co-ethnic
co-optation which tends to transpire in predominantly Latino districts by giving
second- and third-generation Latinos an advantage over foreign-born Latino
immigrants. To address the gerrymandering strategies that excluded and
disadvantaged minority populations, the 1965 Voting Rights Act mandated that race

63
be an organizing category. But in constructing racialized districts, no distinction is
made between documented, naturalized, and undocumented immigrants and
individuals’ nation of origin nor is consideration given to whether these immigrants
are first- or second-generation. As a consequence, Latino immigrants rely on Latino
second-and third-generation co-ethnics to be their political representatives. However,
this co-ethnic relationship can develop into clientelism and patronage politics,
particularly when Mexican immigrants do not become naturalized citizens and
become active voters.
A third type of incorporation is gender-based. This gendered division of
political labor is evident “homeland politics” and “domestic politics” (Jones-Correa
1998). Latino immigrant men tend to be involved in homeland politics through the
formal electoral field in their country of origin (for example, dual citizenship
campaigns), while immigrant women tend to be involved in local politics, but local
politics that lie outside of the formal political arena and in direct relationship to state
institutions.
24
Pardo (1998) illustrates the female-gendered form of local politics
through a case study of Mexican American women activists in East Los Angeles and
Montebello, California. These activists engaged in what Clause Offe (1985) calls the
politics of reproduction by becoming involved in issues like education, neighborhood
safety, housing, and other community problems. A key characteristic of these politics

24
Urban political scientists often ignore this relationship not only because of its direct the relationship
with the state apparatus, which circumvents the electoral field, but they also ignore it because this is a
gendered relationship, often involving women as political actors.

64
is that they usually transpire directly between a community group and specific state
institutions but rarely enter the electoral arena.
It is important to emphasize, however, that class, ethnic, and gender modes of
incorporation are probably used simultaneously. Thus, urban regime leaders can
target middle-class, second-generation Latino males and attempt to incorporate that
segment of the population into the electoral politics, while incorporating immigrants
and Latina women into social reproduction politics—such as neighborhood safety or
workforce development—via public-private partnerships that connect those
individuals directly with state institutions.
Although urban regimes can inhibit the emergence of a politically
progressive agenda through exclusion or incorporation, grassroots organizations are
not always concerned with developing a progressive political agenda. This is the
second insight stemming from the literature on immigrant political participation in
American cities: the political and economic interests of grassroots organizations are
not always aligned with the interests of low-income immigrants and the development
of progressive politics. Scholars have shown that grassroots organizations play
different roles in the local mobilization of immigrants. Perhaps the best known role
is one where grassroots organizations challenge social inequality, which fits well
with the concept of denationalized local citizenship and the assertion of social rights
at the local level. This can occur through the formation of cross-sectoral coalitions
that advance a working-class agenda (Regalado 1998); through “new-unionism”
activities, like livable wage campaigns (Milkman 2000, 2006); and through social

65
protests that challenge inequality by highlighting state’s complicity in creating that
inequality (Pardo 1998).
However, many nonprofit community organizations have little interest in
promoting a critical, denationalized citizenship in the local civic or the political
sphere (Andersen and Wintringham 2003; DeSipio 2001). Some scholars attribute
this to the process of professionalization. As agencies professionalize, they tend to
lose touch with their grassroots constituencies. They begin to hire staff with
professional credentials, and they become more concerned with sustaining the
organization’s budget than with sustaining community change. Other scholars note
that some organizations lack the capacity to promote this critical citizenship because
they are understaffed and poorly funded and have enormous demands for services
often across multiple constituencies (Andersen and Wintringham 2003; Wong 2002).
Moreover, nonprofits with a 501(c) 3 status are prohibited from fully participating in
the electoral process (Wong 2002). Their intervention in the political process can
only be indirect, through educational campaigns around specific policies or
encouraging immigrants to naturalize.
Indeed, some nonprofit organizations use citizenship as part of an
instrumental purpose of acquiring resources for clients, not to build a progressive
political agenda. Andersen and Wintringham (2003) point out that some nonprofits
simply do not see their mission as increasing the political capacity of the immigrant
community as a whole. These organizations may offer a range of services related to
assimilating into U.S. society, such as obtaining permanent residency, preparing for

66
naturalization, job placement, assistance with home purchases, and teaching of
English skills, but they do not emphasize becoming a citizen for purposes of voting
or having a say in collective decision-making. In other words, they view
naturalization as an instrumental mechanism that can help an immigrant improve his
or her position in society but not necessarily empower him or her politically.
The scholarship on immigrant political participation in American cities,
however, contains a noticeable gap related to immigrant empowerment in the context
of public-private partnerships. This gap is the absence of an integral state theory.
Most of the immigrant political participation literature conceptualizes immigrant
mobilization as occurring in civil society, outside the realm of the state (Aleinikoff
2001). Although the immigrant mobilization literature depicts urban political elites
actively engaging grassroots organizations, it generally does not consider the extent
to which urban elites and local government actors draw upon the changes in the local
state apparatus to mediate this relationship. These scholars tend to ignore the ways in
which new forms of local state restructuring—in the form of decentralization and
workfare policies, for instance—can increase the capacity of the urban regime to
incorporate grassroots organizations that work with immigrants into the local
economic growth coalition. For instance, Jones-Correa (2001) describes many
institutional shifts that have occurred during the 1990s, such as the creation of
Federal Empowerment Zones, that have resulted in a different governance
framework at the local level, which provides urban regimes with tools to incorporate
the grassroots and voluntary sector into public-private partnerships designed to

67
organize a local labor force for businesses. However, he fails to link the existence of
these policies to the broader shifts in the workfare state and to the urban regime
leaders’ ability to use workfare policies to incorporate immigrant workers into the
local economy as a de-skilled, contingent, and flexible labor force.

TOWARDS A THEORY OF MEXICAN IMMIGRANT EMPOWERMENT IN
PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
Does the neoliberal transformation of the local state and the changes to
citizenship impact the empowerment of Mexican immigrants? Do these changes to
the local state and citizenship produce Mexican immigrant political subjects that
promote or that challenge neoliberal policies? A response to these questions entails
understanding how Mexican immigrant empowerment occurs in the context of
public-private partnerships in inner cities or cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies.
As seen above, the critical urban governance and immigrant political agency
literatures provide different responses. The first group suggests that changes to the
local state and citizenship are decreasing the capacity of marginalized populations,
including immigrants, to challenge neoliberal policies at the local level (Brenner and
Theodore 2002; Goodwin and Painter 1996; Harvey 2005; Jessop 1997a; Jessop,
Peck, and Tickell 1999; Kearns 1995; Lauria 1999; MacLeod and Goodwin 1999).
This is because urban regimes use public-private partnerships and community
empowerment not only to incorporate grassroots organizations into the economic
growth agenda but also to produce political subjects who actively support a local

68
state in which government promotes the interests of the business community and is
responsible for capital accumulation rather than redistribution.
The immigrant political agency scholarship tends to argue that nation-state
restructuring and citizenship in the context of neoliberal economic globalization
strengthens the capacity of immigrants to assert social rights and pressure local
government to address hardships (Castles and Davidson 2000; Glick-Schiller, Basch,
Szanton-Back 1995; Holston and Appadurai 1996, 2003; Ong 1999, 2006; Sassen
1998, 2003, 2006; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Soysal 1994, 2000). These scholars
claim that immigrants can use a denationalized form of citizenship at the local level
through forms of belonging, identity, and rights to place demands on the local
government to address urban hardship.
Each literature cannot, by itself, explain how immigrant empowerment occurs
or does not occur within the context of public-private partnerships in inner cities or
cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. While urban governance scholars fail to
account for the ways in which immigrants draw upon shifts in nation-state
citizenship to contest neoliberal policies at the local level, the immigrant political
agency scholarship fails to consider the ways in which recent local state
transformations have led to greater incorporation of grassroots organizations in a
neoliberal economic growth agenda. These two groups, moreover, arrive at different
conclusions because they use different theories of the state, citizenship, and
empowerment. To explain immigrant empowerment in the context of public-private

69
partnerships, it is necessary to create a theoretical framework that borrows key
insights from each literature about those three variables.
The framework that I propose draws upon notions of the integral local state,
denationalized local citizenship, and a community empowerment process that can
lead to the formation of political subjects that support a neoliberal or progressive
agenda. The theory of the integral local state highlights the intrinsically relational
constitution of the state and civil society. When applied in the context of a neoliberal
political economy, the theory suggests that first, urban regime leaders use the local
state to reach into civil society through a set of policies and institutional mechanisms
(for example, public-private partnerships, forums, and social networks). Second,
urban regime leaders use specific discourses to justify building partnerships between
grassroots organizations and business leaders to advance an economic growth
agenda. Third, urban regime leaders use a variety of capacity building techniques to
train or develop a specific type of political subject, the enterprising citizen.
The notion of denationalized local citizenship, the second element of the
theoretical framework, acknowledges that there are multiple dimensions to
citizenship—belonging, identity, and rights. Citizenship is more than the civil,
political, and social rights bestowed by a nation-state on individuals. Citizenship is
also a set of everyday social practices that establish one’s sense of belonging and
identity in connection to a particular place. However, it is not just immigrants who
use citizenship to challenge inequality. Urban regime leaders can use public-private
partnerships to establish a model of citizenship that supports the use of the local state

70
for capital accumulation rather than redistribution. Citizenship is constructed through
practices and through a specific discourse that shape not only beliefs but also
institutions.
Empowerment, the third element, is viewed as a process that is used not only
by immigrants to assert social rights but by the urban regime leaders to incorporate
grassroots organizations into the local economic growth coalition. Thus, rather than
merely repressing empowerment, local state actors can actually take over the
meaning and practice of empowerment and guide it in a politically conservative
direction. The developmental and social justice models of empowerment in the local
governance and immigrant political agency scholarship, respectively, assume that
empowerment occurs first in civil society and then targets the state or that the state is
used primarily to repress immigrant populations. However, these models fail to
acknowledge that the state is a constitutive element of civil society (as per integral
local state theory), not just a target of empowerment. In short, urban regime
members can also use a community empowerment process to create support for
neoliberal policies by creating practices and conditions to empowerment within a
nonprofit organization and social network.
Drawing upon this theoretical framework of the integral local state,
denationalized local citizenship, and an expanded notion of empowerment, I propose
the concept of enterprising citizenship, which can be used to understand how
empowerment occurs in the context of public-private partnerships in inner cities or
cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. Enterprising citizenship refers not only to

71
the citizen who—as an individual—is self-reliant, economically self-sufficient, and a
supporter of neoliberal policies, but also to that system of government, grassroots
organizations, business leaders, and others who work actively to produce the
enterprising citizen. This enterprising citizenship, more specifically, is structured in
the form of a “local regime”—through specific and enduring policies and practices
rooted in a particular concept of the citizen as a self-reliant and self-sufficient
individual.
This enterprising citizenship, as the underpinning of Santa Ana’s public-
private partnerships, allows urban regime members to mediate and structure the
terms under which Mexican immigrants and grassroots organizations belong to the
city and the appropriate forms of individual and collective action through which
Mexican immigrants become members of the city. The concept of a local
enterprising citizenship regime helps advance a specific thesis: While neoliberal
transformations to the local state help immigrants ameliorate some urban hardships,
they hardly address the underlying social inequalities that produce this hardship.
Moreover, while changes in nation-state citizenship may enable immigrants to
mobilize civic networks to press local government for resources to address hardship,
urban regime actors are able to use public-private partnerships to co-opt an
immigrant empowerment process. They are able to co-opt immigrant empowerment
processes when these lack a critical perspective that names unequal power relations
and fails to engage the political networks that shape the local state.

72
CHAPTER TWO
Research Design, Methods, and Context

This dissertation uses a qualitative research approach to investigate how
recent transformations to the local state and citizenship shape Mexican immigrant
empowerment in public-private partnerships in inner cities and cities at the bottom of
urban hierarchies. I have combined elements of three qualitative methodologies to
document and critique the political-ideological uses of community empowerment
and citizenship in the context of public-private partnerships.

RESEARCH DESIGN: AN EXTENDED CASE STUDY APPROACH
The first methodology is Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram’s (1999, 2005)
policy design approach which posits a relationship between public policy and the
social construction of citizenship. It argues that most public policies “target” specific
populations, such as children, foster youth, business people, women, immigrants, to
name only a few. The social construction of a particular target population, according
to Schneider and Ingram, will usually affect the type of public policy used for that
population. Target populations, generally speaking, can be socially constructed as
independent, dependent, deserving or undeserving (Figure 2.1). For example, when
the target population of foster children is defined as dependent but deserving, that
will legitimize public policies that provide support to foster children and financial
incentives to foster parents. However, when the target population of children of

73
“illegal” immigrants is defined as dependent and undeserving, that will likely lend
support to punitive proposals, such as those embodied in Proposition 187 (see
Introduction). I use a policy design approach to document how urban regime leaders
use the concept of the “enterprising citizen” (defined as a self-reliant and self-
sufficient individual) to promote public policies and programs that provide
incentives to individuals and grassroots organizations to join the local economic
growth coalition.

Figure 2.1: Social Construction of Citizenship

Business owners

Gang members

Children

Immigrant children
Source: Adapted from Schneider and Ingram (1999)

Although the policy design approach draws attention to the relationship
between public policy and the social construction of citizenship, it does not have the
tools to engage in an ideological critique of the positive social construction of
citizenship as it relates to Mexican immigrants. At the local level, Mexican
Deserving Undeserving
Independent Dependent

74
immigrants may be socially constructed in a positive way, that is, identified as
enterprising citizens. This construction may lead to public policies that create
incentives for immigrants—for example, job training opportunities and subsidized
child care—and for business—for example, workforce coordination, tax deductions,
and redevelopment projects. When Mexican immigrants are positioned as
enterprising citizens, does that serve the interests of low-income Mexican
immigrants? Does it serve the interests of business owners? Or does it, perhaps, do
both?
To answer those questions, I supplement the policy design methodology with
Michael Burawoy’s (1991) extended case study method, which assumes that
everyday life in metropolitan areas is shaped by power inequalities and resistance.
The extended case study method uses participant observation as a primary tool to
identify and critique the political ideology and economic interests embedded in
everyday practices. This method requires, first, a provisional theory and argument
about how a macro-level process informs a concrete sociopolitical process. I
articulated this provisional theory of Mexican immigrant empowerment in the
context of public-private partnerships by combining three theories of the integral
local state, denationalized local citizenship, and empowerment that can lead to either
politically conservative or progressive ends (see chapter one). Using this framework,
I argued that urban regime leaders use the concept of enterprising citizenship to
create political subjects that support the local state’s promotion of business interests.

75
After identifying a provisional theoretical framework and argument, the
extended case study method moves to a second, empirical stage. In this empirical
stage, the researcher can draw upon a wide range of qualitative research methods,
including interviews, focus groups, discourse analysis, narrative interpretation, and
participant observation. (The specific methods used in my dissertation research are
described later in this chapter.) The qualitative data on micro-level processes are
used to uncover the political and ideological interests of various groups within a
metropolitan context. However, in the third step, unlike a positivist, quantitative
study that uses data to test a hypothesis to discover a general law of social processes
absent power relations, these data are used to reconstruct the initial theory—to
understand the strengths and limitations of the theory and to explain the relationship
between macro- and micro-level dynamics in the context of the metropolitan spaces
shaped by unequal power relations. For example, regarding Mexican immigrant
empowerment in the context of empowerment-oriented public-private partnerships,
the extended case study method helps to document how Santa Ana’s urban regime
leaders have used the concept of enterprising citizenship to legitimize the local
government’s efforts to create a system of labor force coordination, tax incentives,
and resources to support businesses interests—not to strengthen the social rights of
Mexican immigrants.
I supplement Burawoy’s extended case study approach with another
methodology, his own “global ethnography” approach. An elaboration of the
extended case study, the global ethnography approach addresses what is called the

76
nation-state trap (Burawoy 2000; see Glick-Schiller, Basch, Szanton-Back 1995).
The nation-state methodological trap refers to the tendency to interpret local
phenomena primarily (or exclusively) in relation to nation-state processes and to
ignore the ways in which global-level political and economic processes also inform
local-level social, economic, and political processes. The global ethnography
approach helps focus attention on the ways in which the everyday actions of local
state actors, local businesses, grassroots organizations, and immigrants embody
tensions between the local-, national-, and global-level processes. For example, the
restructuring of the local state documented in this dissertation is not merely a
function of the interests and tensions that exist among local-level actors. The process
of local state restructuring in a neoliberal direction is supported by changes to the
nation-state in the context of economic globalization, such as decentralization of
policy making from the federal to the local level, the transformation of welfare to
workfare programs at the federal level, the privatization of public services, and the
internationalization of economic processes (see Jessop 1997a, 2002). A global
ethnography approach seeks to make explicit how local and micro-level processes
are informed by and interact with national and global processes.
Using aspects of these three methodologies, I examine two dimensions of the
relationship between political elites and local government actors—the urban
regime’s leadership—and grassroots organizations and Mexican immigrants as it
relates to the empowerment transpiring in Santa Ana’s public-private partnerships.
First, I seek to understand how urban regime leaders discursively and institutionally

77
structure the empowerment process through public-private partnerships; how they
use this empowerment to include immigrant residents as members of a city; how they
deploy this political ideology to organize the public-private partnerships; and how
they produce and presuppose a specific model of citizenship through these public-
private partnerships.
Second, I seek to understand how local grassroots organizations and Mexican
immigrants engage urban regime members through the mediation of empowerment-
oriented public-private partnership; how they gain access the local state through
these partnerships; how they support, resist, or oppose the urban regime’s dominant
form empowerment and citizenship; and how, through these public-private
partnerships, they are able (if at all) to influence the formation of a type of
citizenship that both claims social rights while also challenging the underlying forms
of social inequality.

DIFFERENTIATED GEOGRAPHICAL SCALES AND MULTIPLE
INSTITUTIONAL SITES
This dissertation conceptualizes the local level as an interlocking set of
geographical scales and institutional sites that are constitutive elements of urban
politics (Agnew 2002; Miller 2000; Routledge 1994; Staeheli 1994). These three
methodologies, however, do not adequately conceptualize the dynamic ways that
different geographical scales (neighborhood/political ward/city) and multiple
institutional sites (government, electoral field, quasi-governmental public-private

78
partnerships, nonprofits, neighborhood coalitions) within the local setting affect
public policy. The urban governance and immigrant political agency literatures, as
well as the three qualitative methodologies for this study, simply contrast the “local”
to the regional, state, national, or international levels, leaving the local level as an
undifferentiated social and political geography.
It is important to account for the different ways that geographical scales and
institutional sites shape the interaction among political actors operating within the
local level. For example, the dominant discourse at the city level may or may not be
the same as in a neighborhood. Neighborhoods can be sites of counter-discourses, or
what Villa (2000) calls a “barrio logos.” Neighborhood leaders might resist (or they
might support) the initiatives of city leaders. Some neighborhoods may be more
plugged into political networks at the city, county, state or federal level.
Within a neighborhood, organization leaders and the organizational members
can have different discourses. Some social networks, say ones involving second- or
third-generation Mexican-origin communities, might perceive their political,
economic, and social situation differently than do the networks in which Mexican
immigrants are enmeshed. Indeed, the members of one social network might
perceive their relationship to the city differently than the members of another
network. Each group’s perceptions of their local citizenship, in the sense of
belonging and owning the community, would be distinct. Certain organizations
within the same neighborhood, moreover, might be politically conservative, while

79
others might be politically radical. So, the relationships of these networks and
organizations to the local government can vary, depending on the interests involved.
I use a “geographically and institutionally nested” research design to account
for the various geographical scales and institutional sites through which local
policies and programs are created and implemented (Figure 2.2). This geographically
nested approach focuses on three geographical levels (city, neighborhood,
organization) and three institutional sites. At the city level, I focus primarily on the
institutional- and organizational-level dynamics by which political elites and local
state actors together structure empowerment processes to produce enterprising
citizens (for instance, public private partnerships via the Neighborhood Improvement
Program, Economic Development Department, and Redevelopment Agency). At the
neighborhood level, I focus on how a coalition of grassroots organizations organized
a movement to claim resources for a marginalized and predominantly immigrant
area. At the organizational level, I focus on the internal organizational dynamics by
which a nonprofit organization deals with dominant empowerment and citizenship
promoted by state agencies. Finally, I place the interactions among these different
local actors within broader shifts in the political economy and nation-state
restructuring.

In
te
g
r
al
lo
c

80
Figure 2.2: Nested Sites and Scales

CHAPTER THREE: SELF-RELIANT NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS
My inquiry focused on the ways in which the City’s efforts to increase the
number of neighborhood associations and to incorporate the nonprofit sector into a
community capacity-building approach affected the power of the more affluent
neighborhood associations. I found that (1) the network of neighborhood associations
and nonprofit agencies that the City has built since the mid-1990s have not shifted
the electoral and civic power base of affluent neighborhoods, but they have instead
reaffirmed and strengthened the power of those neighborhoods; and (2) in their
pursuit of gentrification (one part of broader capital-accumulation strategies tied to

81
the rentier class), the neighborhood associations used their increased political power
to gain greater access to local political elites and local government actors.
From January 2002 to December 2004, I conducted participant observation of
the following groups: Com-Link, an umbrella association of neighborhood
associations; the Community Development Resource Network, comprising
grassroots and nonprofit organizations; and several neighborhood associations from
both affluent and low-income areas. I kept field notes from these meetings, focused
on the key items of interest and the extent to which their neighborhood leaders knew
government staff, elected officials, and business leaders, and other individuals who
shape policy-making processes in the city. I also collected documents, such as flyers,
e-mail communications, mailings, newsletters, and newspapers, which circulated in
these meetings or across the networks. I analyzed my field notes and documents
using a grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin 1998).
In addition, from February 2003 to August 2005, I served as an appointed
member of the City of Santa Ana’s Community Redevelopment and Housing
Commission (CRHC) and from August 2005 to August 2006, I was an appointed
member of the Planning Commission. In Santa Ana, and perhaps other cities, these
are the two most influential policy-making bodies. CRHC is an advisory body to the
Community Development Agency and City Council. Although CRHC does not
formally make decisions, it vets most key policy items pertaining to housing and
redevelopment before they are presented to the City Council. The Planning

82
Commission is more of a formal decision-making body on most issues pertaining to
land use. It advises the Planning Department on regulatory and policy matters.
In addition to field notes from each meeting, I archived all meeting agendas,
minutes, and documents from these meetings. I was particularly attentive to the
differential role that neighborhood associations play in the policy making process
with regards to these two influential policy making bodies. I suspected that the
leaders of the more affluent neighborhood associations would have a greater role in
policy making through these two committees than do leaders from low-income
neighborhoods. In addition, I noted not just moments when affluent neighborhood
leaders came to the meetings, but the extent to which these leaders used a discourse
that was similar to that used by staff from the Community Development Agency (and
later by members of the Planning Commission). My working hypothesis was that
there would be a lot of overlap between how these leaders viewed issues and how
staff members constructed policy.
Finally, in order to understand the role of neighborhood associations and
nonprofit organizations in terms of the formal electoral arena, I participated in two
other activities. First, to gain insights on the role of neighborhood associations and
nonprofit organizations with regards to the electoral process in Santa Ana, I assisted
three candidates in three separate (and successful) City Council and school district
races in 2002 and 2004. My involvement in these campaigns helped me see the
intricate and powerful role that high propensity voters from affluent neighborhoods
play in local elections. I registered the ways in which candidates, elected officials,

83
and the leaders of affluent neighborhood co-constructed a political discourse and
strategies that were used to define campaign issues and to mobilize voters. Few
Mexican immigrants are members of these civic and political networks.
Moreover, in 2004, to better understand the role of Latino nonprofit
organizations and less affluent Latino neighborhoods in the context of local
elections, I served as co-chair of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education
Project, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to registering Latino voters. This
experience gave me additional insights into the limited ways that nonprofit
organizations and low-income neighborhoods influence the electoral process.

CHAPTER FOUR: FIGHTING POVERTY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS
My inquiry explored the relationship between business leaders and the City’s
discourse and policies related to economic self-sufficiency. This chapter is a
discursive and policy analysis of the various documents from the different agencies
responsible for economic development in Santa Ana. I found that (1) the business
community plays a central role in influencing the discourse of the City’s Economic
Development Department (EDD); (2) the policies that have emerged through the
EDD and labor coordination efforts support the interests of businesses; and (3)
business interests are not all the same—as much as some neighborhood associations
have a greater say over policies, some businesses stand to gain more than do others
from economic development policies. In particular, businesses catering to low-

84
income Mexican immigrant clients tend to be adversely affected by the City’s
dominant economic development policies.
Through my participation in CRHC, I collected extensive information from
various EDD programs, including research documents, Internet web site information,
and other materials produced by the Federal Empowerment Zone, the California
Enterprise Zone, the W/O/R/K Center, Redevelopment Zones, and the Workforce
Investment Board. By focusing on the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, I also
analyzed the discourse of the business community. From January 2002 to November
2005, I collected and analyzed the monthly editions of the CityLine, the official
newspaper of the Chamber of Commerce, and I read various documents on the
Chamber’s website.
To obtain the perspective of businesses serving low-income Mexican
immigrant customers, I focused on businesses located in Downtown Santa Ana. I
obtained information in two ways. First, the CHRC delegated responsibility to me to
spearhead a community dialogue among Downtown businesses in the Business
Improvement District, established in the late 1980s. The purpose was to generate
information to create a District budget that would represent the various interests of
the different groups in Downtown. Through this process, I conducted fifty-two semi-
structured interviews with Latino business owners about their role in Downtown and
their experience with the City. I also facilitated two community forums and analyzed
the findings. I then developed a budget for the City Council. Throughout this
process, I had an opportunity to speak to business leaders serving different clienteles.

85
Secondly, as member of the CRHC and the Planning Commission, I collected
documents involving policy decisions regarding housing and business development.
I actively participated and documented the ongoing effort during the summer of 2006
to create a Specific Plan (called the Santa Ana Renaissance Plan) for the Downtown.
If passed, this plan will affect the land use designation for a number of
neighborhoods and businesses in the Downtown area.

CHAPTER FIVE: INCORPORATING A PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT, AND
CHAPTER SIX: RESISTING EMPOWERMENT
The research for chapters five and six was conducted concurrently. Data for
these chapters were collected through a study I conducted from July to December
2002. This research was funded by the Pew Civic Trust, and it was conducted under
the auspices of California State University, Fullerton (through which I obtained the
proper Institutional Review Board Approvals), and the Orange County Register.
This case study focuses on an effort by a neighborhood coalition to claim
resources to build a community center in Delhi, a historically segregated Mexican
neighborhood in Santa Ana. This coalition mobilized a sense of membership to a
local community (a local denationalized citizenship) to pressure local government
for funds to construct the community center. I was well positioned to undertake an
examination of this neighborhood movement because from 1993 to 1999, I worked
as a program coordinator for the neighborhood’s primary nonprofit organization, the
Delhi Center. That organization was deeply involved in the coalition and

86
mobilization, and ultimately, it became the nonprofit that owned and managed the
community center.
I conducted sixty-five interviews with key informants, including Delhi Center
staff and board members, elected officials, City staff, and other individuals involved
over the past 20 years in the neighborhood movement and the development of Delhi
Center. Those interviews were then transcribed and analyzed. Secondly, I conducted
four focus groups involving thirty-nine neighborhood residents, who discussed their
perspectives on community needs and on their role in the efforts to build the
community center. These discussions were also transcribed and analyzed.
Thirdly, I collected primary materials and documents from key informants
and various community-based organizations. These included newspaper clipping,
letters, memoranda, and other communiqués; agendas, announcements, minutes of
meetings, and other written reports of processes and projects; and assorted
administrative and organizational documents, including grant proposals, progress
reports, records showing the number of clients served, organizational charts and
budgets, maps and charts of the geographic characteristics of a place, and internal
survey and program evaluation data.
Lastly, I also conducted extensive participant observation of the grassroots
organization’s empowerment practices through its various programs, board meetings,
and other organizational dynamics (for example, interactions with neighborhood
residents and participation in coalitions). In addition, I facilitated a planning process
for their board members to revise the organization’s by laws. As part of the sixty-five

87
interviews, I also interviewed all twenty staff members about the programs and the
empowerment process.

RESEARCH SITE: MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS IN SANTA ANA
The City of Santa Ana, in California’s Orange County, is an appropriate
choice to examine Mexican immigrant empowerment in the context of public-private
partnerships in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies. Santa Ana is
a predominantly immigrant city. Foreign-born residents accounted for more than half
of the city’s population in 2000, the second highest percentage of foreign-born of
any U.S. city above 50,000 residents. Santa Ana’s urban regime leaders, moreover,
have launched numerous public-private partnerships seeking to empower residents
by promoting social self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency.
Orange County contains over thirty city jurisdictions and lacks a dominant
central city. Within this suburban space, Santa Ana is the civic center (where the
county offices are located, including a federal courthouse) and the largest city in
terms of population, with 337,977 residents in 2000, followed by Anaheim
(328,014), Huntington Beach (189,594), Garden Grove (128,821), and Orange
(165,196). Santa Ana is also the ninth largest city in California, and the fifty-second
largest city in the United States.
25
From 1970 to 2000, the city’s population more

25
All statistics describing Santa Ana and Orange County come from the U.S. Census Bureau,
1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000.

88
than doubled, from 156,601 to 337,977 residents. During this thirty-year period,
Orange County also grew rapidly, from 1,420,386 to 2,846,289 residents. By 2000, it
was the fifth largest county in the United States, with 2,846,289 million inhabitants.
As the third most densely populated county in the U.S., Orange County was home to
one in every one hundred U.S. residents in 2000.
Unlike the demographic growth in Orange County, which occurred in
relatively newly incorporated and planned cities (for example, Irvine), the population
growth in Santa Ana gave the city a distinctly urban character. By 1990, Santa Ana
had already become the second most densely populated city in California, second
only to San Francisco. In 2000, Santa Ana had 12,426 residents per square mile,
exceeding Los Angeles (7,861 per square mile), but comparable to Boston (12,166
per square mile) and Chicago (12,700 per square mile). The number of persons per
housing unit rose dramatically from 2.9 in 1980 to 4.6 in 2000, making Santa Ana
the most overcrowded of any U.S. city with more than 50,000 residents.
26

Santa Ana’s population density and overcrowded conditions resemble those
of a traditional inner city, as does its high degree of historic racial and class
segregation. Mexican immigrants to Orange County have been concentrated
disproportionately in Santa Ana. In 2000, fifty-three percent of all Latinos in Orange
County resided in two cities (464,079 of 875,579), Santa Ana (257,097) and
Anaheim (153,374). Nearly seven of every ten Latino residents live in five cities

26
Jennifer Meno, Los Angeles Times, Local Section, September 16, 2003.

89
(Santa Ana, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange, and Fullerton). These are the county’s
older cities. The Mexican-origin population in Santa Ana increased dramatically
during the ten-year period from 1980 to 1990: over 90,000 new residents—mostly
Mexican immigrants—entered Santa Ana. By 2000, a mostly Mexican-origin
population (immigrant, second- and third-generation) was the hyper-majority of the
city’s population, comprising 76.1 percent of the Santa Ana’s residents (that is,
257,097 of 337,977 residents).
As Mexican-origin residents moved in Santa Ana in large numbers, a pattern
of social-spatial emerged based on class. In 2000, the per capita income of Santa
Ana residents was $12,152 compared to $25,825 for Orange County residents. The
poverty rate in Santa Ana (19.8%) was nearly twice that of Orange County residents
(10.3%). Over half of Santa Ana’s residents had less than a high school education.
Perhaps because of their low-educational background, Mexican immigrants were
integrated into Orange County’s low-wage workforce.
The demographic changes that Santa Ana underwent from 1970 through the
1980s resulted in two separate civic worlds—that of the political elites and that of
Mexican immigrants (Figure 2.3). The political elites—the demographic minority,
but the electoral majority—represented the middle-class and predominantly White
residents. Mexican immigrants were the demographic majority, but the electoral
minority. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Santa Ana’s political elites relied on
repressive policies to address the increased presence of immigrants. Stacy Harwood
and Dowell Myers (2002) documented the City’s repressive approach to Mexican

90
immigrants during that period. The City Council passed various anti-crowding, anti-
street-vending, and parking ordinances to limit the number of Mexican immigrants
entering the City. It also authorized—or at least condoned—regular police
crackdowns of day-laborer hiring sites in Santa Ana. Most of these policies were
implemented by Planning Department’s Code Enforcement Department and the
Police Department.
Grassroots organizations challenged these repressive policies. Lisbeth Haas
(1991) showed how the Santa Ana Neighborhood Organization (SANO) organized
Mexican immigrant residents and politically progressive White activists to challenge
the City’s policies. Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (HMN), a national immigrant-
rights organization, sued the City to obtain a higher percent of housing set-aside
funds in five of Santa Ana’s six redevelopment zones.

Figure 2.3: Severed Civic Worlds

91
By the mid 1990s, changing political conditions weakened the position of
Santa Ana’s traditional political elites. First, the number of Latino-elected officials
and Democrats increased in Santa Ana and Orange County. The 1990 redistricting
efforts turned the 69
th
Assembly District, the 52
nd
State Senate, and the 46
th

Congressional Districts into predominantly Democratic districts. These districts
encompass Santa Ana. In 1996, Loretta Sanchez defeated Robert Dornan for the 46
th

Congressional District. In 1998, Lou Correa gained the 69
th
Assembly District seat.
And, in 2000, Joseph Dunn, a Democrat with close connections to Latino civic and
political leaders, won the 52
nd
Senate District race. During this time, Latinos began
to saturate the elected offices in Santa Ana. In 1996, for example, Latinos became
the majority of the school board, and in 2000, they became the majority of Santa
Ana’s council.
27

Altogether, the grassroots oppositional tactics and the increase in Latino and
Democratic representation shifted the political power away from Santa Ana’s
traditional political elite. These individuals were no longer able to continue using
only exclusionary strategies. Although they never abandoned those tactics, urban
regime leaders took a noticeable turn towards empowerment strategies, that were the
hallmark of the welfare reform movement of the mid-1990s. They drew on the shift
in federal and state policies and funding, which now focused on workforce

27
Santa Ana’s Latino elected officials (both the school board and city council) and political
circles were divided between those supporting Mayor Miguel Pulido, a pro-business champion, and
those supporting Nativo Lopez, a well-known community activist advocating for Mexican immigrant
working families.

92
development and business competitiveness, and that involved a shift from a social
service role to capacity-building role for government. Urban regime leaders
implemented empowerment programs through the Community Development Agency
(CDA), which houses the Economic Development Department, Downtown
Development, Housing, Neighborhood Improvement Programs, and the
Redevelopment Agency. These empowerment strategies were implemented through
public-private partnerships, that is to say, through formal agreements between
government agencies, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Although cloaked in a
discourse touting minimal government intervention, government agencies, through
these partnerships, extended their reach into the civic sphere by working with
nonprofit organizations and voluntary associations (neighborhood associations).
Through these state-civil society relations, as described in chapter three, these
partnerships enabled political elites and local government agents to create avenues
for greater participation of Mexican immigrants to address the urban hardships that
they faced as low-wage workers living in overcrowded poor neighborhoods. Because
these public-private partnerships may be the central avenue by which Mexican
immigrants participate in local governance, it is important to understand how
participating in public-private partnerships influences the levels of empowerment for
Mexican immigrants and their capacity to challenge social inequality.

93
CHAPTER THREE
Self-Reliant Neighborhood Residents:
Building Community Capacity to Upscale a Mexican Immigrant City

By the late 1990s, Santa Ana’s political leaders and the City’s agencies had
significantly shifted their approach to its immigrant population. Rather than relying
primarily on exclusionary and repressive public policies that characterized the 1980s
and early 1990s, urban regime leaders began to use more inclusive strategies,
focused on community empowerment, to incorporate Mexican immigrants into the
city. The goal was to not only cultivate and include some Mexican immigrant leaders
in the city’s civic and political networks but to bolster the urban regime’s capacity to
restructure the local state to take advantage of the new neoliberal agenda that had
come to prominence under President Bill Clinton.
28
Although the institutional
restructuring of the local state was premised on the assumption that City government
would experience a constant, steady decrease in federal funding over the foreseeable
future, the central objective of the restructuring was a desire to support the political-
economic interests of Santa Ana’s rentier group (i.e., landowners and developers)
and the broader business community.
This chapter examines the ways in which the urban regime leaders turned the
expected decline in federal and state resources into a political project advancing

28
See chapter one for a definition of neoliberal ideology and a discussion about the roll-out
phase of neoliberalism, ushered in by the Clinton Administration.

94
economic interests of Santa Ana’s rentier group, as seen in the efforts of affluent
neighborhood associations to gentrify middle- and high-income neighborhoods. They
advanced this political project by taking the City’s Neighborhood Improvement
Program (NIP) in a new direction. Its role shifted from being an agency mandated to
provide services to neighborhoods (a social service model) to one working to
increase self-reliance among residents (a community capacity-building approach). To
achieve this, the NIP used two primary tools: neighborhood associations and the
Community Development Resource Network (CDR Network). With NIP’s active
support, the number of neighborhood associations grew from approximately sixteen
in the 1980s to over sixty by 2003. NIP also formed the CDR Network, which
became a powerful tool for coordination and communications among seven hundred
and fifty grassroots organizations, especially in terms of communicating the
neoliberal rhetoric that underlay the restructuring of local government. Through the
neighborhood associations and the CDR Network, NIP was transformed into a hub
through which low-income and affluent neighborhood associations, nonprofits, and
grassroots organizations interacted and took action to address neighborhood
problems.
NIP’s efforts increased the capacity of affluent neighborhood association
leaders to pursue their economic interests as members of the rentier class. This is
visible in two related processes. On the one hand, NIP’s neighborhood associations
and the CDR Network provided an opportunity for residents to become partners with
the city government to resolve specific local problems. Through new civic and

95
political networks and quasi-state mechanisms, avenues appeared for Mexican
immigrants to belong to the city, but they could only belong to the extent that they
followed a particular model, one that supported efforts to reduce local government’s
responsibility to address neighborhood problems and that required them to accept
responsibility for being self-reliant with the support of grassroots organizations. In
line with neoliberal ideology, the City now provided technical assistance and
coordination services through NIP to help individuals and organizations solve their
own problems by first drawing upon the resources of civil society.
Immigrant residents participating in neighborhood associations did not
become involved in the formal electoral arena or use the public sphere via social
protests to advance social-justice-based demands on the local government. Perhaps
the strength of the City’s community capacity-building approach is that it does not
explicitly deny organizations the right to use social justice strategies. Instead, by
framing social action in a particular way—requiring only the formation individual
skills and social capital among neighborhood residents, nonprofit organizations, and
local government—it has not led to greater immigrant or grassroots participation in
the formal electoral field or to the use of social protests, economic boycotts, rent
strikes or other forms of collective action associated with social justice strategies.
On the other hand, NIP contributed to the interests of affluent neighborhood
associations by actively supporting Communication Linkages (Com-Link), the
umbrella organization for the neighborhood associations. The Com-Link leaders
were principally dedicated to promoting rentier privileges over renter rights, and

96
benefited by the increase in the number of neighborhood associations. Com-Link
was run primarily by affluent homeowners, some of whom had been in the vanguard
of the movement to repress and control Mexican migrants as that population began to
burgeon in Santa Ana in the 1980s. These neighborhoods mobilize a political bloc in
Santa Ana. Members are involved in most of the City’s commissions, including the
Community Redevelopment and Housing Commission and the Planning
Commission. NIP’s support of Com-Link helped reinforce existing forms of political
inequality between rentiers and renters (mostly immigrants), and between those who
have formal citizenship (and form part of the electoral base) and those who do not
have formal citizenship (and are excluded from the electoral field).

PROMOTING SELF-RELIANCE: “THEY JUST SHOWED UP AT MY
DOOR…”
“They just showed up one day to my house,” recalled Maria Quintero,
29
a
Mexican immigrant woman in her late fifties. Although Maria has lived in the Delhi
neighborhood for over thirty years, she had never been involved in a neighborhood
association. “But, after so many years of people parking in front of my house,” Maria
exclaimed, “I finally called the City to tell them about all the cars parking in front of
my house on trash day…I just couldn’t take out my trash!” The situation had become
quite intolerable because Maria had “mountains of trash in [her] backyard.” To

29
I use pseudonyms for private conversations but real names when a person has made his or
her views known publicly. The interviews were conducted in Spanish. The translations are my own.

97
Maria’s surprise, several days after calling the City, “They just showed up at my
door and convinced me to get involved [through the neighborhood association]. They
told me the neighborhood association could help me do something about the whole
parking and trash thing.”
Maria remembered that no one in the neighborhood or the City government
had ever asked her to get involved in the association, and she confessed that she was
somewhat confused about its purpose and functions. Nonetheless, because her
situation had become unbearable, Maria “rounded up a couple of [her] friends—you
know, to have some support—and got involved.” In fact, the association had been
inactive for many years, so she and others had to reactive it.
Maria pointed out that City staff members were very helpful in reorganizing
her neighborhood’s association. They assisted in developing the association’s by-
laws and organizing the election of new officers. When the first meeting was held,
City staff reserved a room in the local elementary school, produced flyers in English
and Spanish, and even offered to mail out a reminder a week before the meeting.
Maria recalled that “[City staff] asked us to give them the addresses of the people we
wanted to invite. So, we gave them names and addresses, over one hundred between
all of us.” Maria also pointed out that the City “brought someone who spoke Spanish
and English to translate at the meeting for those who couldn’t speak Spanish.”
City staff even helped the neighborhood association resolve a conflict with an
adjacent neighborhood organization. Maria recollected: “Yes, [the other association]
wanted to represent a part of our neighborhood, even though they didn’t really know

98
the people in this area like we do. So, the City people, they told us we could gather
people’s signatures, from our neighbors who lived in these blocks; [people in the
neighborhood] needed to sign a letter saying that they wanted to be part of our
neighborhood association, not the other one.” The Delhi Neighborhood Association
was able to collect the needed signatures to solidify the boundaries of the Delhi
neighborhood territory.
By 2003, six years after first being contacted in 1997, Maria had become the
vice-president of her neighborhood association. She reflected on the association’s
purpose and activities over the course of her involvement:
We do a lot for this neighborhood. We organize a Halloween party every
year. We get like 300 kids to come. It’s really fun. We also do two or three
neighborhood clean ups [per year], especially when the City brings the big
dumpsters to collect the big stuff, like the couches and refrigerators. It can get
crazy on those days, but we’re here to organize the event, so that everything
runs smoothly. And the good thing about [dumpster day] is that we don’t see
a lot of big things, like couches, outside by the railroad tracks. It’s cleaner
now.

Maria’s story of her own involvement and of the neighborhood association’s
increased activities reveals a shift in the role of local agencies, which were now
acting as “coordinating agents” rather than “service providers” vis-à-vis local
community organizations in Santa Ana. For instance, local government staff
members were able to create civic-engagement opportunities for Maria and other
residents by actively structuring a neighborhood association and linking it to various
city services. As a result, neighborhoods were better positioned to make direct

99
demands to local government for efficient waste management services, faster police
response to crime and parking-code violations, housing code enforcement, and street
and other public works repairs, among other things. These activities allowed
someone like Maria to emerge as a political subject, someone able to take action on
such neighborhood issues as trash, parking, safety, and housing, among others.
The local government’s intervention in Maria’s neighborhood-level social
networks was not an isolated case. It was part of a broader neighborhood-
engagement initiative led by the NIP across Santa Ana in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Mark, a City staff member
30
who has worked for the local government since the
1980s, pointed out that before 1995, there were approximately sixteen formal
neighborhood associations in Santa Ana. “I say ‘approximately,’” the staff member
clarified:
because some of these neighborhood associations, like Maria’s, existed on
paper only. They really didn’t have a core, active leadership. The more active
neighborhoods were the ones that have a lot of power, you know, the ones
that can mobilize the voters north of Seventeenth Street, the southern part of
the City, and in the central area.

From 1995 to 1998, however, NIP increased the number of active
neighborhood associations from 16 to 46. Another City staff member recalled:
People really responded really well, but it was very time consuming,
especially because everybody wanted to meet at the same time at night, so we

30
The five City staff members interviewed requested that they not be identified, so the names
used here are pseudonyms. Not all staff interviewed work currently in the City; and, not all work in
the NIP. However, all had sufficient familiarity with the neighborhood initiative to serve as key
informants.

100
sometimes had two or three neighborhood meetings on the same day, at the
same time. It was kind of crazy because we were really not that highly
staffed, you know. It was just a few of us doing all this work.

By 2003, NIP had formed over sixty active neighborhood associations,
31

covering a significant portion of Santa Ana, especially the areas with Spanish-
speaking residents. Andy, another City staff familiar NIP’s work, pointed out that:
…[M]any of these neighborhood associations were formed in areas that had
never had one before, so it just meant that we had to do a lot of hand holding
at the beginning, at least until they got started. You know, especially with the
by-laws and that sort of thing that can get a little technical. And we had to do
this in two or three languages.

According to Brian, who was also an NIP staffer, increasing the number of
neighborhood associations and expanding their responsibilities for dealing with local
problems was motivated, in large part, by a significant decrease government funding
to address these issues. “The County of Orange declared bankruptcy in December
1994,” Andy recalled, “and Santa Ana had invested heavily in the County’s
investment portfolio…you know, the whole Bob Citron fiasco…and, so many
programs and projects in the City were cut, significantly reduced, or just put in the
freezer until we had more money.”
In response to the Orange County bankruptcy, the City created three districts
to coordinate local government services more efficiently, each with a district

31
Forming over 60 formal neighborhood associations is significant. The City of Los
Angeles, a much larger and more populous entity, has formed approximately 80 neighborhood
councils.

101
manager from NIP coordinating the services (Figure 3.1). District managers were
responsible for organizing regular inter-agency meetings with Public Works,
Planning, Parks and Recreation, the Fire Department, the Police Department, and the
Library to make government services work more efficiently, with fewer dollars. This
rationale influenced city-community relations in forums, presentations, and
community consultation sessions during the mid-to-late 1990s.
The formation of neighborhood associations was a central strategy in the
reorganization of local government during the mid- to late-1990s—not an
afterthought. Organized neighborhood associations were asked to take greater
responsibility for solving their own problems. In part, this entailed assuming roles
previously assigned to City staff. This is clear in one of Maria Quintero’s reflections
about a neighborhood clean-up “party,” now that the government had delegated that
responsibility: “We’re here to coordinate the event, so that everything runs
smoothly.” However, neighborhood associations also began to play a more active
role in terms of addressing problems through indirect government intervention,
which involved creating a strong link between government staff and local residents
involved in these neighborhood associations. This enabled residents to address
community problems by threatening to get the local government to intervene. This is
evident in the story that Maria Quintero told about a family who lived in a
dilapidated apartment teeming with cockroaches:

102
Figure 3.1: Santa Ana Neighborhood Associations and Districts

Source: City of Santa Ana, Community Development: Neighborhood
Improvement “Community Development Districts Approach.” Date unknown.

103
The person happened to show up to a [neighborhood association] meeting
one day, and there she told us about her situation, about the hot water not
running and the cockroaches dropping from the wall at night, and other stuff.
We told her to report it to the city, but she felt intimidated because she was
not, you know, she was not legal here. And she was afraid the property owner
would kick her out and her three children. And then there was something else
happening with her husband, so she couldn’t afford to, like, leave.

The association members were not sure how to proceed. If they asked
government agencies to intervene directly, they felt that would cause problems for
the family, perhaps leading to their eviction. At the end of the meeting, Quintero
recalled, “one of our members said she knew the principal of the local elementary
school, and she would go talk to the principal.” Quintero recounted:
So she talked the principal. And the principal knew someone from Code
Enforcement, and he told the principal that he would be happy to come out
and inspect the apartment, but if he found it had a bad code violation, he
would probably have to close the apartment and then the person would lose
the place. He told the principal that it would be good if the principal went to
the apartment owner first, and talked to him.

The Code Enforcement person sent the name of the registered property owner
to the principal, but the owner had hired a property management company. After
several attempts, the principal finally contacted the company. Quintero recalled:
So the principal called and expressed a concern, and said if something was
not done immediately, he would call the Code Enforcement person. He even
gave them the name of the Code Enforcement person, you know, just to show
them he was serious. And, so the property management company thanked
him for calling them and they dealt with the situation, like, the next day—
without kicking anybody out. Hot water…and no more cockroaches.

104
A City staff member also mentioned this story as an example of the success
of the community capacity-building approach. He believed this story demonstrated
an important principle about the City’s approach:
It’s about addressing the needs of the residents by fostering social capital.
This person did not know anyone, but by attending a meeting, she was able to
find someone who knew someone who could help her. She got plugged into a
network that went all the way to the principal, then to Code Enforcement.
And it was this very rich network, or community, that was able to solve the
problem. Sure, we were ready to help directly, but it is clear in this instance
that direct government intervention would have caused more harm than good
for that family.

In that comment is the assumption that social capital is a set of trusting
relationships that connect individuals through a large and rich network that includes
not only neighborhood residents but also people from local organizations and
institutions, like schools and government agencies. These social networks thus take
on a quasi-state character, because of their ability to mobilize the power of the local
government—even if it is only in an indirect manner. These state-civil social
networks bolstered the capacity of residents and neighborhood groups to solve their
own problems without direct government intervention. These rich relationships,
moreover, were informal enough that it allowed specific actors to deploy the local
government in an indirect way. This quasi-state and informal character enabled the
actors to calibrate the deployment of local government, taking into account that
residents have different types of citizenship (undocumented, permanent resident, and

105
citizen). In this case, Maria assumed that direct local government involvement would
trigger the expulsion of the resident who was presumably an undocumented person.
Acting together within a state-civil society relationship, neighborhood
residents and local state actors were able to find a win-win solution for this specific
problem. They addressed the problem of dilapidated housing, not allowing the
landlord or the property management company to get away with a health and safety
code violation, while simultaneously avoiding the displacement of the family renting
the unit. However, the deployment of the indirect form of government did not solve
the problem of poor housing and living conditions for more renters in Santa Ana.
The neighborhood association did not pressure the City to go after all landlords that
fail to provide adequate living conditions.
The formation of neighborhood associations to foster social capital among
residents and with individuals in public agencies was not simply about decreasing
government intervention, however. It was about changing government’s modality
(from direct to indirect) with regard to neighborhood associations in areas with a
substantial Mexican-origin population. María Quintero’s story of improving the
housing conditions for a neighborhood resident suggests that associations now rely
more on indirect, and oftentimes informal, intervention by government actors
whereas previously, government intervened directly and formally. This suggests that
a neighborhood association’s social capital endows it with the ability to use the
“threat” of state action rather than relying on direct, concrete government
intervention. The state is still very much present, but by shifting the burden for

106
action to the citizens, it manages to simultaneously save resources (survive with a
smaller budget) and redefine and broaden citizenship as a set of practices, not just
legally endowed political, civil, and social rights (by empowering neighborhood
residents—regardless of their legal or citizenship status—to deploy local state
mechanisms to address a problem).
Moreover, the neighborhood association functioned as an important social
space within which to align local state actors and neighborhood residents. Through
the neighborhood association, residents got to know the staff members who work for
NIP, Code Enforcement, and the Police Department, because staff members
participated in the association meetings and in other ways that would not have
previously occurred, they had opportunities for interacting with the residents. At the
same time, residents were also the actors who calibrated and legitimized the presence
of the state and the new mode of state intervention in the neighborhood. The
calibration depended on how residents chose to deploy their own social capital,
particularly in mobilizing the threat of state action. Through their involvement in an
association, residents, regardless of their legal status, were able to deploy state action
(and have concrete links to local state actors) in order to address a problem. Thus, it
is possible to say that neighborhood association leaders had become partners in city
management.

107
BUILDING COMMUNITY CAPACITY: TRANSFORMING GOVERNMENT
AND FORMING NEW POLITICAL SUBJECTS
Although Maria Quintero’s story revealed that the local state intervened,
albeit indirectly, on behalf of residents in the Delhi neighborhood, NIP actively
promoted the idea that, as one City employee stated, “government intervention works
against self-reliance.” Emphasis was placed on the residents’ rather than the
government’s actions. One of the critical ways that NIP framed reduced local
government intervention as an ideal was through the adoption of a “community
capacity-building” approach over the “service provider” model.
32
This role shift was
explicitly articulated in various public forums and events (Figure 3.2).
The implicit argument is that the community capacity-building approach is
superior to the social service model because the social service model commits
government to act in three ways that undermine self-reliance and empowerment.
First, the social service model defines communities as problems to be fixed, as
deficits, or in terms of social pathologies. When communities are defined as
problems-to-be-fixed, the role of government is to intervene to address the problem.
Secondly, this model relies on agents of change external to the community, that is,
government agencies or government-funded services. The employees of these
organizations, unlike the community members themselves, presumably have the

32
NIP’s model draws inspiration from John McKnight and Jody Kretzman’s “Building
Communities from the Inside Out,” or what is also called an Asset-Based Community Development
(ABCD). John McKnight served as a consultant to the City of Santa Ana in developing this system of
neighborhood associations and the City’s organizational structure to support this neighborhood
system.

108

Figure 3.2: The Social Service and Community Capacity Building Models

Source: City of Santa Ana, Community Development: Neighborhood Improvement
Program. Date unknown.

109
professional skills and resources to solve the community’s problems. Thirdly, this
model of intervention allegedly breeds dependency and disempowerment. The social
service model, according to the City staff member, can never fully solve a problem
because of its “charity” orientation: it provides only short-term solutions for chronic
problems. As the City staff member put it, “the social service model gives people a
fish, but doesn’t teach them how to fish. So what it does, in point of fact, is to justify
a self-fulfilling goal: the point is not to eradicate the problem, but to fund the
organization to work on the problem.”
By contrast, the community capacity-building model takes an individualist
and neo-communitarian approach. This model portrays the population in three ways.
First, it defines individuals and communities in a positive light, as people and places
with assets, resources, and untapped skills. From this perspective, instead of
government intervening directly to address a neighborhood concern, government
agencies focus on “investing” in people’s individual skills, group resources, and
networks so that they can define their own problems and launch and sustain their
own change efforts. Secondly, the community capacity approach privileges
neighborhood residents, voluntary associations, and local institutions as the most
important agents of change, not government. A core principle is that local actors and
organizations generate solutions to local problems. As a City staff member stated,
We have to re-educate community members to look towards their own assets,
resources, and skills to solve their own problems, that is, to become socially
self-reliant. They need to be educated about their own assets because for so
long the social service model has trained community members to see
themselves as problems, not as people who can solve problems; and, so

110
changing people’s mentality and helping them finding their hidden assets is
something we do as building blocks for nurturing social capital.

Thirdly, the community capacity-building model’s approach is focused on
self-reliance and empowerment. According to City staff, “it does not seek to generate
that vicious cycle of organizations wanting to build their budgets instead of
empowering communities.”
Although the community capacity approach is portrayed as superior to the
social service model, both approaches are very similar in how they treat unequal
power relations. To use Steven Gregory’s (1998) words, both models are “power-
evasive”.
33
Neither the social service nor the community capacity-building model—
as presented by City staff—possesses an explicit theory of power relations. Neither
model explains neighborhood problems as a result of power asymmetries due to
racial, gender, class, or other social hierarchies. Instead, problems are a function of
individual behavior or the presence of government programs that undermine self-
reliance. Neither the social service nor community capacity approach requires
understanding how social inequality shapes spatial and other social conditions in the
neighborhood. Both models fail to explain the social conditions of a neighborhood as

33
Gregory (1998), who studied the impact of the social service model on local Black activist
networks during the 1960s in Corona, New York, found that Black activist networks were focused on
housing discrimination and civil rights before that state intervened with an army of professionals with
a technical expertise and a discourse of needs and problems. By promising funds to address the daily
problems and by reorganizing civic and social networks, many neighborhood activists began to
participate in the state’s social service model. Black activist networks adopted the social service
model’s needs-based discourses, and left aside the previous social justice framework, which had
advocated for political, civil, and social rights.

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a function of unequal power relations, or, in the specific case of Santa Ana, the lack
of immigrant civil, political, or social rights. These models do not consider that the
excessive parking, overcrowding, or trash in particular areas of the city might also be
a function of the lack of formal, electoral political power of immigrants in Santa
Ana.
The absence of this critical sociopolitical framework is reflected in Maria
Quintero’s understanding of neighborhood problems, especially the trash issue. For
instance, Maria never asked herself why certain parts of Santa Ana are more
crowded than others, or why certain parts of Santa Ana had greater parking problems
than others. Without an overarching framework that understands local issues in
relationship to structural inequality, neighborhood associations can deploy the local
state to reinforce existing forms of social inequality. The health and safety building
codes that were deployed against the property management company, for instance,
can also be used to reinforce property rights.
34
For instance, Maria has used the
threat of local state action with people along her street. When asked whether having
a neighborhood association has made any difference in terms of the trash and parking
problem that motivated Maria to become involved in the neighborhood association,

34
Indeed, in the case of the family living in deteriorated housing conditions, Maria and the
City staff did not mention that the family had a right to decent housing. Instead, the neighborhood
actors only needed to know about the violation of health and safety building codes. Instead of taking
action against local government for letting property management companies violate building codes,
the neighborhood association residents allied themselves with the local government to focus on one
property management organization. This mobilization of the neighborhood association’s network did
not require invoking of “social rights” or “social justice.”

112
she stated: “I let people know that if they parked in front of my house during trash
day, that I will call Code Enforcement to ticket them—or even the police.” As Maria
noted, “People don’t park in front of my house anymore during trash day. They can
park in front of other houses, but not mine, because they know the consequences.”

NIP INCORPORATES NONPROFIT AND GRASSROOTS
ORGANIZATIONS
A second major initiative of NIP was the creation of the Community
Development Resource Network. As its web site notes, its mission is to:
strengthen the linkages between the hundreds of agencies and organizations
that consider Santa Ana to be their arena. These groups include parent teacher
organizations at schools, religious congregations, community based and
service organizations, municipal agencies, educational institutions and
business representatives. The Steering Committee has identified the
following top priorities: Networking and Recognition, Strategic Planning,
Information Sharing, Encouraging Collaboration.

As part of its networking and recognition efforts, the Network collaborates with
other city agencies in organizing Celebrate Santa Ana, an event that:
showcases a citywide effort to improve the network of public agencies,
organizations, businesses, schools, neighborhood groups, and residents that
are committed to making Santa Ana a better place to live, work, and play.
[The Network] has become an extremely positive factor contributing to
recent successes achieved in Santa Ana. The Steering Committee, made up of
over 25 key agencies and organizations, has been the backbone to our efforts.
Please be sure to network and discuss projects with these individuals (who
will have a special blue ribbon name badge) … at this year’s event.

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As part of its strategic-information work, the Network provides organizations
with GIS and demographic data and helps locate grants. To keep information flowing
among the organizations and to let people know about specific activities and
resources, it compiles informational and events flyers prepared by local
organizations, and it distributes these in a quarterly newsletter that reaches over 750
organizations. It also hosts roundtables for service clubs, faith-based organizations,
businesses, and neighborhood associations. More recently, the Network has
embarked on economic development initiatives, such as the Earned Income Tax
Credit Campaign (to raise residents’ awareness of the availability of this money), the
Social Compact Drilldown study, and a time-dollars project. The Social Compact
Drilldown is a method for gauging the extent of the informal economy in Santa Ana,
in order to link it to business opportunities and banking institutions.
The Network also collaborates closely with NIP on one of the latter’s
signature programs, Grants for Blocks, a mini-grant program that provides very
modest amounts of leveraging money, typically less than $500, to neighborhood
associations to carry out revitalization projects (Figure 3.3). It inverts the well-
known “Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)” program (emphasis mine),
which tends to fund social service providers in Santa Ana and is associated with
government programs addressing poverty using the social service model. The
receiving organizations must match the grant through in-kind or direct funds. In

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other words, consistent with the “sweat-equity” logic of the workfare state,
35
the
neighborhood association has to match government funds by identifying resources in
the community.
The Community Building Awards is another of NIP’s signature programs and
one in which the Network is also closely involved. It reinforces the community
capacity-building approach through symbolic and status rewards. This program asks
neighborhood leaders to recognize others who are giving time to their community on
a voluntary basis or who use innovative practices in the voluntary sector in any one
of eleven categories: (1) Rookie of the Year, (2) Non-Profit Housing
Project/Developer of the Year, (3) Faith-Based Social Service Initiative of the Year,
(4) Research Project of the Year, (5) Service Club Project of the Year, (6) Economic
Development/Federal Empowerment Zone Project of the Year, (7) Art in Business,
(8) Board Member of the Year, (9) Executive Director of the Year, (10) Community
Oriented Policing Volunteer of the Year, and (11) General Open Nomination. The
individuals nominated for these awards are those whose actions demonstrate that the
voluntary sector can solve its own problems.

35
See discussion on the Workfare State’s underlying sweat equity logic, which gained
prominence through President Clinton welfare-to-work programs.

115
Figure 3.3: Grants for Blocks Projects through 2002. Brochure
Source: “Encouraging Collaboration between Residents and Community Based
Groups!” Grants for Blocks Projects through 2002. Brochure.

116
Since 1998, NIP has presented these awards at the annual Celebrate Santa
Ana event. Notably, no awards are given for nonprofits that organize rent strikes, sue
property management companies, or lobby for livable wage ordinances. Nor are
there awards for providing the best quality mental health service, therapy, case
management, alcohol and drug treatment services, adoption services, or childcare,
since these are all services that operate within a traditional social service model.
Thus, each year, the awards mark a moment when the superiority of the community
capacity-building model over the social service or a social justice approach is
symbolically demonstrated. There is an implicit script for acceptable social action: if
an organization wants to address a particular neighborhood problem, it must first
mobilize internal social networks, without using government agencies directly. In
other words, a neighborhood is supposed to develop relationships of trust and mutual
support, but that mobilization must remain within the civic realm and not formally
engage the local state through the local electoral arena or through social protests or
other collective action associated with social justice. The Community Building
Awards recognize work in civil society that is rooted in voluntary action, but only in
those sorts of actions that do not attack the urban regime, do not reintroduce the
social service model, or do not call for broader, structural transformation.
A third way in which NIP helped to restructure the local state was through its
support of Communication Linkage—or what locally goes by the name Com-Link.
This voluntary association is an arena in which the leaders of the sixty or so

117
neighborhood associations meet, and it has a lot of political clout because these are
the same actors who can mobilize significant numbers of voters come election time.
Com-Link formed in 1989. Its founding leaders played a key role in the
citywide mobilization of neighborhoods that succeeded in forcing the local
government to address the deteriorating quality of life in Santa Ana. Some of the
Com-Link leaders connected the deterioration of neighborhood life not just to the
number of immigrants that entered Santa Ana during the 1980s and 1990s, but also
to the way in which elected officials allowed developers to build apartment
complexes in single-family residential areas (Haas 1991). They have been
instrumental in putting a moratorium on new multi-family construction in Santa Ana
since the late 1980s, and have been successful in establishing design guidelines for
developers who want to enter Santa Ana (Harwood and Myers 2002). At least three
people who came out of the neighborhood movement—Lisa Bist, Alberta Christy,
and David Benavides—were eventually elected to the City Council after 1996.
During the 1990s, NIP assisted Com-Link by providing staff support and a
facility for the regular meetings attended by neighborhood association leaders.
Today, Com-Link meets on a monthly basis and is well attended by representatives
of the various neighborhood associations. These neighborhood leaders share
information about various policy issues, from transportation plans to proposed
development; and Com-Link regularly sponsors an elections forum for city-council
and school-board candidates. This election forum is televised in the local channel
and tends to draw all candidates. However, the key leadership of Com-Link is not

118
drawn from a cross-section Santa Ana’s neighborhoods. Instead, most of the these
individuals come from affluent neighborhoods and were active long before the local
state restructuring began in the mid-1990s.
In a number of ways, the Com-Link leadership wields strong informal and
formal influence with City staff and policy makers. First, these representatives come
from areas, such as Floral Park, French Park, Sandpointe, Washington Square, and
Park Santiago that turn out significant amount of voters. These are precisely the
areas that have a greater proportion of owner-occupied homes and higher household
incomes than the rest of the City. That relative affluence, electoral presence, and
years of city political involvement may be the key reasons that these people have a
level of cultural capital that people from other neighborhoods do not. This is
manifested in the holiday parties, fundraising events, and other social events (at
which one or another elected official usually present) that these leaders are able to
host.
That interaction creates a civic-social network that operates informally, but
elected officials use just such networks to gather information for making policy
decisions. Even more importantly, these affluent neighborhood leaders have
infiltrated key City committees where formal public policy is forged. By placing
members on city commissions (including the Community Redevelopment and
Housing Commission, the Planning Commission, and the Environment and
Transportation Commission), Com-Link’s leadership has also had a constant
presence in local policy debates. Among other things, Com-Link members from the

119
neighborhood associations in historical areas, like Heninger Park, French Park, and
Floral Park, have the right of review over any home remodeling projects in their
areas. The activities of the Com-Link leadership constitute one well-known aspect in
the formation of an urban regime, defined as an informal arrangement between
elected officials and civic and business leaders (Stone 1989). Although the informal
civil society-state relations in the affluent neighborhoods resemble that of the low-
income neighborhoods, these neighborhood leaders are unequally positioned vis-à-
vis the formal local state apparatus.
These more affluent neighborhoods have been engaged in various projects
that seek not only to reinforce homeowner rights, but to advance a gentrification
agenda that protects or increases the value of their properties through local state
support. Two cases show a pattern of up-scaling in areas that are geographically
contiguous to these affluent neighborhoods and reveal the complicity between city
government and affluent neighborhood leaders in the promotion of these projects.
These cases illustrate how the politics of neighborhood self-reliance can
differentially support homeowners and renters—and how, through this difference,
the neighborhood self-reliance discourse can reinforce a differentiated and unequal
form of citizenship that is based on the ability to vote and economic interests (that is,
rentier versus renter).

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UP-SCALING THE CITY’S IMAGE: REARTICULATING CITIZENSHIP
After becoming active in her neighborhood association, Maria Quintero no
longer had to deal with people parking in front of her house on trash day because her
neighbors knew what she would do if they dared to leave their vehicles at her curb.
The type of power that Maria now possessed as a result of her involvement in a
neighborhood association, however, is tied to a broader politics of up-scaling the
city. This gentrification politics is rooted in homeowner (or property owner) rights
and seeks to regulate the presence—or erase the mark—of low-income immigrants in
the affluent residential and commercial landscapes of Santa Ana. The increased
number of neighborhood associations has reinforced the power of more affluent
neighborhoods, which also have the ability to mobilize a political bloc in the formal
electoral field. In turn, the network of affluent neighborhoods has used this increased
power to orient the local state in support of a gentrification project that supports
homeowner rights and, importantly, specific forms of capital-accumulation interests
tied to a rentier class.

A CLASS COMPROMISE? AN UPSCALE LAUNDRY FACILITY FOR
APARTMENT DWELLERS
As mentioned earlier, Santa Ana is the most overcrowded city in the United
States, and it is also the second most densely populated city in California. Moreover,
the City is comprised of 55 percent renter units, and 45 percent owner-occupied
units. Even the owner-occupied units include renters and multiple families. Santa

121
Ana’s average household size of 4.55 persons is significantly higher than Orange
County’s 3 persons per household. These living conditions suggest that laundry
facilities are a necessity, not just an amenity, for renters in a City with many multi-
family units who need to wash their clothes in a convenient place. In Santa Ana,
however, laundry facilities are also viewed by urban regime leaders as a sign of a
low-income, working class urban landscape.
In 1996, for instance, the City Council passed an Ordinance that required
conditional-use permits for any new laundry facilities in Santa Ana.
36
To ensure that
these laundromats do not attract criminal activity, these permits established the times
they could be open for business and require that the facility be supervised by an
employee during operating hours. The City ordinance also stipulated that new
laundry facilities cannot be located on arterial streets, that is, those main roads with
heavy traffic flows, which are, of course, the most highly visible areas to locate a
business.
From then until 2005, no new laundromats were built in Santa Ana. Then, in
November of that year, the Planning Commission heard a proposal for a new facility
at the corner of Ross and 17
th
Street, one of Santa Ana’s busiest arterial roads.
Facing the requirements for the conditional-use permit, the applicant had designed
the building in two sections. On the part facing 17
th
Street, he would have an office

36
Santa Ana Municipal Code, Section 41-199. Laundromats. Ordinance Number NS-2245
(3/6/95).

122
space, possibly for an insurance company; behind that would be the proposed
laundromat.
The applicant presented three points in support of his proposal. First, if the
intent of the ordinance was to keep laundry facilities from being visible to passing
traffic, his proposal met this condition by not facing the arterial street. Second, the
laundry facility would provide an important service since two nearby multi-family
apartments provided only three washing machines for three hundred units, an
astonishingly low ratio of one machine per every one hundred units.
The applicant was aware of that members from the influential neighborhood
associations were in the audience at this Planning Commission meeting. Anticipating
their opposition, he had consulted with two of them: Floral Park, immediately north
of 17
th
Street, and Washington Square, immediately to the south. Based on input
from those meetings, he presented his third argument: This facility was an “upscale”
laundromat. Operated by Sparklean, the facility was different from the norm.
Machines would run on prepaid cards rather than coins, minimizing the likelihood of
petty theft. It would have a child-care space to keep children from getting underfoot
or playing in the parking lot. A security guard would be on duty at all times. And
there would be a “fluff-and-fold” service, run by an attendant. Noting that “fluff-and-
fold” laundries were common on the East Coast and in San Francisco, he reasoned,
“If it’s good enough for those high-end places, then why not Santa Ana?”
He concluded the presentation by indicating that this company operated
facilities in Pasadena (Colorado Boulevard), Newport Beach, Dana Point, and other

123
high-income communities in southern California. His proposal, he argued, would be
good for everyone: It would help low-income residents, who needed a facility to
wash their clothes, and it would fit into the City’s efforts to provide amenities to
middle-class households, particularly those from new housing developments
targeting professionals.
One by one, representatives from Floral Park, Washington Square, and
French Park expressed concerns about crime, loitering, and noise even though the
applicant had already addressed these issues. In the end, the laundry facility carried
too strong an association with a particular clientele—a low-income, immigrant
clientele. The neighborhood association leaders did not buy the “up-scaling”
argument. In a four-to-two vote, the Commission declined the applicant a
conditional-use permit. Commissioners siding with the neighborhood associations
expressed concerns about crime, noises, and the over-concentration of laundries in
the area, that is, the same arguments presented by affluent neighborhood leaders.
One of the dissenting Commissioners noted that the conditional-use permit
requirement was creating a local monopoly among existing laundry facility owners.
In placing high barriers to entry into this local market, there was very little incentive
for the local laundry facilities to engage in competitive practices or to invest in better
facilities. These barriers to market entry, the Commissioner argued, mean that the
existing laundry owners do not have to re-invest in their establishments. This
market-based argument supported the idea of decreasing the regulation of laundry
facilities in order to allow a new, upscale product to appear.

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However, this market-based argument also revealed that urban regime leaders
were willing to intervene in the market, an action that runs counter to a pure
neoliberal ideology. This ideological contradiction did not stop urban regime leaders
from regulating the market because their were also engaged in a different economic
project: a gentrification project that deploys the local state in support of a higher-
and-better use of the land, one that supports businesses catering to middle- and high-
income residents.
This case study shows two structures and processes at work regarding
neighborhood associations. First, it suggests that associations representing primarily
homeowners are actively regulating the physical landscape through a discourse that
is informed by not only by race (that is, immigrants associated with crime, trash,
noise, and other nuisances), but by class interests as rentiers. Their viewpoints
reinforce an upscale vision of the landscape, a middle-class version of Santa Ana. It
suggests that upscale facilities need to cater to upper-income consumers rather than
to low-income consumers. Second, this case study reveals the differential level of
power between affluent (predominantly home-owning) and non-affluent
(predominantly renter and immigrant) neighborhoods. Although this differential
power existed even before the increase in neighborhood associations, it will probably
continue because the affluent neighborhoods are also the places that contain the
majority of voters and their residents have additional cultural capital (such things as
understanding of how city politics, and government generally, works; an ability to

125
gain access to City commissions that have the authority to reinforce inequality; and
so forth).

FRENCH PARK TRAFFIC CIRCULATION PLAN: UNEQUAL
CITIZENSHIP
The electoral clout and cultural capital of the affluent neighborhood
associations extends into the realm of citizenship. Not only do these actors have the
power to determine the model by which people are measured as citizens. They have
the power to use the unequal citizenship (based on their electoral power and cultural
capital) to promote policies that gentrify their neighborhoods, even though these
projects adversely impact Mexican immigrant renters. The traffic barricades in the
French Park Neighborhood illustrate this unequal citizenship—and the City’s
complicity in reinforcing this power asymmetry.
According to the French Park Neighborhood website, the community, which
takes its name from the city park at its center, was established in 1878. It is listed on
the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the largest historic districts in
California. Most of its homes are Eastlake Victorian, Colonial Revival, or Craftsman
Bungalow style, having been built between 1888 and 1912. The neighborhood
association is quite active in sponsoring cultural events tied to the French Park’s
history. Over the past fifteen years, as a result of both efforts to classify the homes as
historic sites and concrete investment in restoring and upgrading homes, the
neighborhood has gentrified.

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The French Park Neighborhood, however, is also located close to Santa
Ana’s downtown. The south side of the neighborhood, along Santa Ana Boulevard,
has received large amounts of funding from the Redevelopment Agency, which had
purchased over fifty properties by 2005 (see chapter four). The French Park Traffic
Circulation Plan (FPTC) is part of this larger gentrification process. Neighborhood
association leaders claimed that Washington Street, in the north, had heavy east-west
traffic, which spilled over from 17
th
Street, which links Freeway 5 to downtown
Santa Ana. Such high levels of traffic were unsafe for neighborhood residents,
particularly children going to school.
Since 1998, the neighborhood association has been trying to control traffic
circulation. After numerous studies sponsored by the City’s Environmental and
Transportation Commission, the neighborhood association developed a traffic
circulation plan. In 2002, the City allowed the neighborhood residents to vote on that
plan, which passed in a vote of 66 to 60. Soon thereafter, the City put barricades up
to impede direct access along Washington Street in the French Park neighborhood.
Traffic slowed down dramatically.
However, this traffic plan privileged the interests of homeowners over
renters. Property owners of single-family residences each had one vote.
Condominium owners were not eligible to vote, although each condominium
association was eligible to cast one ballot. The residents of the apartment complexes,
which were concentrated north of Washington Street, were not allowed to vote at all.
The disparity is apparent, considering that the French Park area has approximately

127
289 households, while the area north of Washington Street—what is called the
French Court neighborhood—has approximately 850 households, mostly renters. In
addition, residents of the Logan Neighborhood, also impacted by the traffic plan,
were not allowed to vote at all. Logan is a historically segregated, Mexican-origin
neighborhood (Haas 1995). Based on the vote, traffic barricades were installed.
With the support of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Josephine
Andrade and Wade Little, residents of Logan and French Court, respectively,
challenged the constitutionality of the voting procedure that led to the establishment
of the traffic plan. Many of them could not park along the street anymore. Rather
than throwing the traffic plan out, the City and French Park residents developed and
circulated a second ballot, but this time the ballots were constructed more like a
survey than a vote. City Council members would use the responses to guide them in
their decision-making about the plan. That would effectively take the matter out of
the hands of neighborhood residents, placing it instead in the hands of Council
members. On July 24, 2003, the ACLU—together with Josephine Andrade and
Wade Little—filed a lawsuit to enjoin the City from counting the mail-in ballots. A
Federal Judge granted the injunctions, and later ruled in favor of Andrade and Little.
The traffic barricades were removed soon thereafter.
First, this case highlights how city government moved to protect homeowner
claims over renter interests. It actively deployed its legal resources to challenge the
lawsuit and create an alternative balloting scheme to circumvent the initial lawsuit.
This highlights how the informal relationships established in the context of

128
neighborhood associations are imbued with a quasi-state power in low-income,
immigrant neighborhoods and in high-income neighborhoods. However, the French
Park case illustrates that the state-civil society relationship in the affluent
neighborhoods supports a gentrification agenda—suggesting a complicity between
homeowner associations and city government.
Second, this case also underscores the degree to which city elites and
government actors actively manipulate formal and informal modes of citizenship
through various forms of local state interventions. Renting versus owning a residence
functioned as proxies for citizenship, signaling divisions within the self-reliant
neighborhood residents: Mexican immigrants in low-income, low-voter
neighborhoods do not have the same capacity to shape the local state as middle- and
high income White and Latino homeowners in high-voter neighborhoods. The latter
group has the capacity to restructure and mobilize the local state in support of
gentrification projects benefiting their economic interests.

CONCLUSION
Urban regime leaders in Santa Ana used a neighborhood self-reliance
discourse to engage in an institution-building initiative that incorporated the
neighborhood associations and the nonprofit sector into the City’s governance
mechanisms through the creation of public-private partnerships, just as predicted by
critical urban political geographers. Rooted in the community capacity-building
approach, these networks of neighborhood associations and grassroots agencies

129
defined neighborhood residents as assets rather than as people with social
pathologies and needs. Through this new discourse and the institutionalization of
public-private partnerships between government and neighborhood associations,
Mexican immigrants were socially constructed as self-reliant neighborhood
residents—and were mobilized around an array of projects that sought to improve
the quality of life in neighborhoods.
The Neighborhood Improvement Program’s involvement with neighborhood
associations and grassroots organizations went deeper than fostering the capacity to
engage in collective action to address neighborhood problems, however. The
community capacity-building approach allowed the City to be more deeply involved
in structuring social networks and social action, which manifested in the projects run
by NIP. At the same time, the local government was able to realize its goal of saving
money by reducing its commitment to direct involvement in addressing
neighborhood issues. These actions sought to create a sense of community between
different groups of residents—low-income Mexican immigrant residents and middle-
and high-income homeowners—even though they stood in a hierarchical relationship
to each other regarding their respective levels of influence over policy-making.
This hierarchy among neighborhood associations is denied by those who
want to believe that every resident of Santa Ana is the same. The neoliberal ideology
of individual empowerment and enterprise was so ingrained in the minds of policy
makers, particularly Santa Ana’s business leaders and elected officials, that it took
the form of a truth, what Michel Foucault called a “regime of truth.” Although a

130
central objective of the neighborhood associations was to incorporate Mexican
immigrants as “self-reliant citizens,” it also was meant to incorporate them into a
society that remained hierarchical and biased toward the affluent citizens of Santa
Ana. This was demonstrated as NIP began to give resources and power to Com-Link
and the when the agenda of the leaders of that umbrella organization made it clear
that immigrant empowerment could go only so far. In doing so, they created a
hierarchy of belonging and influence over local policy in Santa Ana that is based on
home ownership rather than just “enterprising citizenship,” that is, the capacity to be
self-reliant and self-sufficient.
The investment in neighborhood associations and grassroots agencies was
about forming political subjects who could deploy local state power to support
homeowner rights. This discourse around property rights supported the interests of
higher income neighborhoods, as illustrated in the two case studies pertaining to
renters and homeowners around laundry facilities and the traffic circulation plan.
The investments in neighborhood associations and grassroots organizations, in other
words, were also turned into political capital for specific affluent neighborhoods.
Affluent neighborhoods, in turn, used this political capital to restructure and deploy
the local state to promote gentrification. It is important to underscore, however, that
the neighborhood self-reliance initiative—as part of a local enterprising citizenship
regime—worked in tandem with an economic self-sufficiency initiative. I explore the
economic self-sufficiency initiative next.

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CHAPTER FOUR
Fighting Poverty Is Good Business: Civic Entrepreneurs, Mexican Immigrant
Techno-Peasants and Gringolandia in Downtown Santa Ana

On January 26, 2005, about a hundred people—mostly neighborhood
association leaders—attended a community forum at the Police Station in downtown
Santa Ana. The topic was the City’s 2005-2010 Redevelopment Plan, and the
attendees were there to provide input. The Executive Director of the Community
Development Agency made some introductory comments about the purpose and
context of the Plan then she went on to highlight the harsh conditions that City
government faced in addressing community needs:
We’re in a bind in Santa Ana. The state is siphoning money from us, and the
federal government is giving us less and less money to address community
needs. This really affects us a lot because Santa Ana houses many poor
residents in the County…In fact, we provide most of the affordable housing
in the County.
So we have to be very wise about how we use our local [Redevelopment]
dollars. See, these taxes come from our local tax base. But our business tax
base, which provides over seventy percent of our general fund budget, is
primarily manufacturing—the percentage of manufacturing business in our
City is one of the highest in California. Although these businesses provide
jobs, they do not contribute much to the City’s budget because property taxes
don’t bring in much for local government. For this reason, we have to
consider developing the retail base, which generates more funds for local
government.

The Executive Director’s comments reveal two critical issues that new forms
of governance seek to address in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban

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hierarchies. The first issue is the presence of a substantial number of low-income
residents, which presupposes a population with many needs, and a local government
that is increasingly responsible for providing a safety net (affordable housing,
education, social services, employment training, health care, and other services). The
second issue relates to the different types of businesses—manufacturing,
commercial, retail, and professional—which generate distinct levels of taxes for
local government. Retail businesses tend to contribute the most fiscal income to
cities, so cities have an incentive for expanding their retail base, particularly that part
of that base that caters to higher income consumers.
This chapter documents the urban regime’s efforts to create an economic
growth coalition that caters to two distinct political and economic interests:
economic players linked to a manufacturing base, retail businesses, and developers
intent on building homes and retail establishments catering to a middle- and high-
income consumer, on the one hand, and grassroots organizations representing low-
income residents, on the other. The creation of an economic growth coalition formed
out of these two distinct interest groups was possible through the deployment of an
entrepreneurial discourse. How does an entrepreneurial discourse create a coalition
from to groups that are traditionally at odds in local politics?
The urban regime uses the entrepreneurial discourse to recast the traditional
roles of grassroots organizations, government, Mexican immigrant residents, and
businesses in the context of the local economy. For instance, the entrepreneurial
discourse constructs nonprofit organizations and local government agencies as

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“businesses” by orienting their work toward the market (for example, by focusing on
workforce training rather than social-service provision) and requiring that they
perform efficiently. Mexican immigrant residents, in turn, are supposed to be active
in the labor market and become business owners themselves, and business owners
are supposed to become “civic entrepreneurs” who tackle poverty as a business
opportunity that reduces their production costs and generates greater profits. Through
this entrepreneurial discourse, urban regime leaders are able to restructure the local
state to incorporate grassroots organizations into the interests of the economic
growth coalition.
Yet, in two ways this entrepreneurial discourse masks the conflicting political
and economic interests between these business groups and low-income Mexican
immigrant residents. First, like the community capacity-building approach in the
context of neighborhood improvement efforts, the entrepreneurial discourse ignores
social hierarchies and unequal power relations. This masking happens by
constructing Mexican immigrant workers and entrepreneurs as disembodied
economic subjects, without racial, class, or gender markings who simply have to
build more skills to experience job mobility and economic independence. Focused on
enhancing the educational levels and work skills of individuals, the entrepreneurial
discourse does not seek to change business practices and labor market dynamics
associated with temporary and contingent work, low service-sector wages, labor
market discrimination, minimal workplace regulation, and lack of health benefits.
Secondly, the urban regime uses the entrepreneurial discourse to discredit downtown

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businesses that cater to a low-income Mexican immigrant clientele. These businesses
are viewed as anti-entrepreneurial, an accusation that legitimizes the City’s
supporting of businesses that target professional, middle-class, and White
consumers.
The first part of this chapter focuses on the Santa Ana Chamber of
Commerce’s efforts to fight poverty by addressing the problem of the “techno-
peasant.” It traces the way in which business owners and non-profit organizations, as
“civic entrepreneurs,” are supposed to lead the charge against poverty, mainly by
creating new partnerships, reforming local institutions to support business interests,
and implementing programs designed to transform Mexican immigrant techno-
peasants and local government into entrepreneurial agents. The second and third
sections focus on the ways in which the civic entrepreneur has built a tax-reduction
incentive system for businesses and launched a gentrification project in Downtown
Santa Ana. The conclusion explains how urban regime leaders use the local
enterprising citizenship regime to sustain and reproduce various forms of inequality.

CIVIC ENTREPRENEURS AND TECHNO-PEASANTS: FIGHTING
POVERTY AND RECONFIGURING THE LOCAL STATE
In November 2005, Ed Gordon addressed the Santa Ana Chamber of
Commerce. Referring to his book, The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs
Crisis, Gordon expressed a deep concern that America was not investing sufficiently
in preparing its workforce to compete in a global economy that increasingly requires

135
knowledge workers skilled in high technology. According to Gordon, America’s
workforce is failing “to keep up with a silently rising technical skills bar.” Gordon
cautioned the Chamber: Those workers who cannot make the bar “will become
tomorrow’s ‘techno-peasants’”.
37

In his regular editorial column in the CityLine, the Chamber’s monthly
newspaper, Mike Metzler—president and CEO of the Chamber for more than twenty
years—worried that the “next-generation of workers are less well educated and less
prepared with the specialized skills necessary to run a high-tech economy.”
38
Metzler
had good reasons to be concerned about Santa Ana’s workforce, with close to half of
the city’s residents twenty-five years of age or older lacking a high school diploma.
The Chamber and the City’s Economic Development Department (EDD)
have used workforce development to serve the needs of the manufacturing sector and
also as a principal strategy to fight poverty by assisting residents in finding jobs.
However, these policies assume that the problem of poverty lies in poor skills and
aptitudes of individuals. The policies fail to define poverty as a function of low-wage
structures and other forms of market discrimination and exploitation. From 1996
forward, local business leaders and city government agencies accelerated the
building of public-private partnerships focused on workforce development. The EDD
built partnerships with the Santa Ana Unified School District, Rancho Santiago
Community College District, and the County’s Social Services Agency to coordinate

37
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, November/December 2005, Vol. 9, No. 6.

38
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, September/October 2005, Vol. 9, No. 5.

136
TANF, CalWORKS, and other workfare policies stemming from the 1996 Welfare
Reform Act. One early example was a Family Resource Center at the Corbin
Community Center. This partnership, which was founded around 1995, included the
County’s Social Services Agency, which partnered with the City of Santa Ana to
provide an array of health, human, and social services—such as childcare and
transportation vouchers. After 1996, this family resource center began to focus on
workforce development. As a County staff member indicated, “During the late
1990s, we had CalWORKS incentive funds that allowed us to pay for childcare and
other supportive services to help people find and keep their jobs. This was quite a bit
of funds, on top of what we had; and these funds were quite flexible, too.”
In 1997, the City’s EDD actively pursued a Workforce Investment Board
(WIB) designation to make it eligible for funding under the Workforce Investment
Act of 1996. Although the City already had a Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA)
designation, the Workforce Investment Act required that the City obtain a WIB
designation by, among other things, forming a council consisting of youth, adults,
businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Through this public-private partnership,
Santa Ana’s WIB established the W/O/R/K Center. The W/O/R/K Center key labor
force coordination services include: (a) job listings (businesses can post job openings
for free); (b) on-site services (businesses can test, interview, or screen job applicants
at the center); (c) on-the-job training (businesses can receive reimbursement for 50%
of the costs of training a new employee); and (d) work experience (businesses

137
receive reimbursement for 100% of the costs for providing a training site for an
unemployed person).
Perhaps the most notable achievement in the efforts to build workforce
development partnerships, however, occurred when the City was designated a
Federal Empowerment Zone (FEZ) in 1998.
39
A FEZ designation is obtained through
a nationwide competition, and it included a commitment of $100 million in federal
funds over ten years to support comprehensive health, human service, educational,
and economic development strategies (Jones-Correa 2001). The City Council
established a FEZ governing board consisting of residents from targeted
neighborhoods, business representatives, health and human service agencies staff
members, and representatives from government agencies. In 2000, however, when
the Santa Ana FEZ was informed that it would receive only 60 percent of its
promised allocation, the governing body decided to use the remaining money to fund
programs focusing on economic self-sufficiency rather than those that would provide
health and human services.
The Chamber’s decision to address the problem of poverty in Santa Ana was
significant because the fight against poverty has traditionally been associated with
agencies and institutions of the Welfare State, and also because poverty itself can be

39
The City applied for a FEZ designation in 1996, and the NIP spearheaded this effort. In
1997, the EDD spearheaded this effort, building upon the network of organizations that NOP had
built. The difference between the first and second grant, according to a staff member, was that the
second grant had an explicit emphasis on economic development and the active participation of the
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce.

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seen as a problem created by the very market that constituted the basis for the
Chamber’s existence. Not surprisingly, then, the Chamber based its approach to
poverty on a different paradigm:
The Chamber has initiated the creation of a new paradigm to help solve the
vexing matter of poverty. The first step is the creation of nonprofit, civic
entrepreneur organizations developed at the local and regional levels, and
financed by business through tax-reduction incentives from the state. These
groups should be overseen by community leaders who perform as brokers
that interface between government, business and the community.
40

Civic entrepreneur organizations are funded by businesses through “tax-
reduction” incentives from the state. These tax incentives create a common interest
shared by businesses and grassroots organizations. Indeed, as Metzler suggests, civic
entrepreneur organizations blur the distinction between businesses and grassroots
organizations. This blurring is also visible in another of Metzler’s comments:
Civic entrepreneurs are neither government nor business. [They are]
community leaders at the grass roots performing as brokers interfacing
between government, business and community. They represent the balancing
third leg of a stool, with government and business the other legs.
41

Indeed, Metzler goes so far as to suggest that the responsibility for addressing
poverty can be placed on the shoulders of businesses:
…a budget strategy that reduces the size of government, offers tax and other
economic-generating incentives to business in return for those businesses
taking financial responsibility for certain issues at the regional and local

40
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, May/June 2004, Vol. 8, No. 3.

41
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, May/June 2003, Vol. 7. No. 3.

139
levels heretofore mandated by state government, like job training and
economic and trade development (emphasis mine).
42

The Chamber defined the “civic entrepreneur” as a civic and political subject
that fights poverty as a business opportunity.
43
This is clear in a CityLine editorial,
entitled “Fighting Poverty Is Good Business,” which argued: “In Santa Ana, poverty
is a business issue and eliminating it is good for the economy and the community.” A
“civic entrepreneur” was defined as a political subject that actively bridges the
interests of business owners and nonprofit agencies by fighting poverty.
This entrepreneurial approach is [was?] linked to an empowerment discourse,
as is apparent in another CityLine issue that explained the Chamber’s efforts to
address poverty through its “Bridge to Career” program:
We want to empower at least 5,000 of our poorest residents to be properly
trained and placed in meaningful employment with area businesses to
become, over time, self-sufficient. Accomplishing that will reduce
government subsidization costs, fill vacant jobs, increase the local tax rolls,
increase business profitability, and reduce poverty.
44

The Chamber explicitly defined “empowerment” in a way that bridges the
interests of business, residents, grassroots organizations, and government and

42
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, July/August 2003, Vol. 7, No. 4.

43
The City of Santa Ana, Rancho Santiago Community College, and the Santa Ana Chamber
of Commerce also received a grant from the Pew Civic Trust to create a leadership training entitled
“civic entrepreneurs”—which lasted from 1998 to 2002—focusing on entrepreneurial principles as the
basis of civic and political engagement.

44
Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce, CityLine, May/June 2004, Vol. 8, No. 3.

140
provides incentives for all sectors involved. The article promises a five-way “win-
win” scenario in which individuals get jobs, government further shirks its
redistributive responsibilities, the tax base grows, businesses are more profitable, and
poverty, in general, declines.
Civic entrepreneurs, using workforce development policies are thus dedicated
to helping address the techno-peasant problem in Santa Ana. In particular, civic
entrepreneurs help techno-peasants by actively forging public-private partnerships
and institutional reforms to align local, state, and federal policies around workforce
development and tax incentives. Consistent with Peck and Tickell’s (2002) argument
about a roll-out phase in neoliberal local state restructuring, these civic entrepreneurs
are not arguing that government should ignore the fight on poverty. Instead, they
seek to restructure the role of government, businesses, and grassroots organizations
by infusing a market-based orientation into local institutions. Rather than providing
direct services and subsidies to low-income or unemployed individuals, local
government’s role is to provide tax incentives so that businesses and nonprofit
organizations can address poverty as a business proposition.
The above discourse of the civic entrepreneur, tax-reduction incentives, and
empowerment has been deployed by urban regime leaders to reconfigure the local
state in at least two ways. First, they forged a “nested” local state (see chapter 1),
based on programs aligned around workforce development, and consisting of
resources and from the state and federal level, as well as tax incentives for local
businesses. Civic entrepreneurs used local government to actively obtain state and

141
federal resources to address local business and community needs (the California
Enterprise Zone, the Workforce Investment Board, and the Federal Empowerment
Zone). Each of these programs required an active decision by the City to pursue and
obtain these resources. The following three maps illustrate how the California
Enterprise Zone, the Federal Empowerment Zone, and the local Redevelopment
Zones overlapped and focused on specific geographic areas within Santa Ana with
high concentration of low-income households and with physical and economic blight
(in the case of the Redevelopment Zones).
Secondly, civic entrepreneurs restructured local institutions. In light of the
severity of the low levels of education and work skills within Santa Ana’s workforce,
the Chamber actively pursued institutional reform of the school district. In an
unprecedented decision, the Chamber supported a successful tax measure to increase
funds for local school construction. Chamber representatives sit on the Santa Ana
Unified School District Bond Oversight Committee. In addition, the Chamber has
been aggressively seeking to establish a sixth high school in Santa Ana, called “High
School, Inc.” In late 2005, the Santa Ana Unified School District approved a policy
that will transform one of the local high schools into a vocational and technology
institute.

142
TRANSFORMING (MEXICAN IMMIGRANT) TECHNO-PEASANTS: THE
DAISY WHEEL, THE LABOR MARKET, AND ENTREPRENEURIAL
AGENTS
Neither Gordon nor Meztler indicated that Santa Ana’s techno-peasants
referred largely to Mexican immigrants. Yet, this group constituted the majority of
the workforce in Santa Ana. In particular areas of the City, such as the areas covered
by the Federal Empowerment Zone, Latino residents (predominantly Mexican
immigrants) are 96 percent of the population.
45
It is clear that workforce
development policies seek to transform Mexican immigrant residents into
entrepreneurial subjects. They are turned into entrepreneurs not only by receiving
workforce training, connections to the labor market, and entrepreneurial training, but
by a rhetoric that seeks to create a shared social position for business owners and
Mexican immigrant workers. This common social position results from a power-
evasive discourse that systematically erases social and economic hierarchies between
both groups. Examples of this rhetoric are visible in the Daisy Wheel Network and
FEZ’ strategic business plan.

45
Santa Ana Federal Empowerment Zone:
www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/cda/FederalEmpowermentZone.asp

143

Figure 4.1a: Overlapping Maps, Space, Residents

Source: Empowerment, Enterprise, Growth. Package describing benefits to
businesses. City of Santa Ana, Economic Development Departmnet. Date unknown.

144

Figure 4.1b: Overlapping Maps, Space, Residents

Source: Empowerment, Enterprise, Growth. Package describing benefits to
businesses. City of Santa Ana, Economic Development Departmnet. Date unknown.

145

Figure 4.1c: Overlapping Maps, Space, Residents

Source: Empowerment, Enterprise, Growth. Package describing benefits to
businesses. City of Santa Ana, Economic Development Departmnet. Date unknown.

146
The Daisy Wheel Network, a public-private collaborative to support
workforce development, is one of the principal institutional mechanisms by which
the urban regime transforms Mexican immigrants into entrepreneurial subjects. As a
Federal Employment Zone (FEZ) funded program, it organizes government,
nonprofit organizations, and businesses to transform low-skilled workers—the
techno-peasants—into productive workers. The FEZ Newsletter (Winter 2004)
contained an article on Ivan Perez, someone who had obtained employment services
through the Daisy Wheel. A photograph showed a young man with dark skin, short
hair, a goatee, and a dark sweater with a hood. Although not explicitly stated, his
Mexican origin was visually apparent, both in his physical characteristics and his
name. It was not clear if he was a recently arrived immigrant, an immigrant who had
been in the United States most of his life, or a second- or third-generation Mexican
American. The article made no reference to these distinctions.

147
Figure 4.2: FEZ Newsletter

Source: City of Santa Ana. Federal Empowerment Zone Newsletter. First Quarter
2004.

148
Ignoring ethno-racial markers, the article focused on Ivan as an economic
subject. It highlighted that he was undereducated, had low skills, and was
unemployed:
On October 28, 2003, Federal Empowerment Zone (FEZ) resident Ivan Perez
walked into the Santa Ana W/O/R/K Center not fully knowing what the
Daisy Wheel Network could do for him. He walked out of the W/O/R/K
Center that day a happy young man because he understood exactly what the
Network could do. In just one day, the client was enrolled and assisted by
three partners of the Daisy Wheel Network—the Employment Development
Department (EDD), the City of Santa Ana W/O/R/K Center and Taller San
Jose Tech. EDD has provided Ivan with employment strategies which consist
of such activities as resume assistance, job coaching, job interview
workshops, and job referrals to name just a few.

In a before-and-after narrative, the article explained how the Daisy Wheel
had contributed to the Ivan’s transformation. Ivan entered the Daisy Wheel
directionless, but leaves there on his way to success:
Before being introduced to the Daisy Wheel Network, Ivan was a 20 year-old
with no direction. He had been out of work for a month and had no formal
training….Thanks to the Network, the client not only has received such
things as a resume to present to employers and transportation assistance, but
is also receiving paid training with even greener pastures once he completes
his training in March 2004. This is a classic example of how the Daisy Wheel
Network effectively works together and how a FEZ resident can benefit from
the services.

This story of transformation ended with Ivan’s potential for economic self-
sufficiency. After a three-month training, he was supposed to be ready to enter the
construction field and, presumably, would no longer need the Daisy Wheel Network.
But he also would become an entrepreneur. This is suggested by the Daisy Wheel

149
figure below, which contains a box on the bottom right of the diagram entitled
“entrepreneurial training,” suggesting that this is the step after becoming a worker.

Figure 4.3: The Daisy Wheel

Source: City of Santa Ana. Federal Empowerment Zone Newsletter. First Quarter
2004.

150
The central assumption in Ivan’s story, however, was that the labor market
would provide an income—whether as a worker or an entrepreneur—to ensure
economic self-sufficiency. It begged the question: To what extent does the labor
market provide a wage to allow workers to be economically self-sufficient without
government support? Can someone who started off with very low skills obtain a
livable wage in a global economy requiring highly skilled workers?
Through various reports, studies, and strategic plans, the FEZ has addressed
this question in two ways. The first way is by distinguishing between two anti-
poverty models: (a) livable wages; and (b) government income subsidies. This
contrast is seen in one a key research document commissioned by FEZ:
The focus of most inner-city revitalization programs over the past fifty years
has generally been on social programs to address poverty, healthcare, and
education, among others. Broad-based social programs may have helped
soften the blows of poverty but sustainable personal development has not
occurred to assist people out of poverty. However, it is clear that ensuring
employment for residents is the crucial issue necessary to make this vision
work. Without jobs that pay livable wages, the area will not advance in a
sustainable way (emphasis mine).
46

The first model, government income subsidies, made indirect reference to the
Welfare State, whose programs merely “softened” the blows of poverty. Claiming
that poverty cannot be solved through income supports, the FEZ proposed a model

46
Santa Ana Research & Development Infrastructure Committee, Santa Ana Chamber of
Commerce, Orange County Business Council for Santa Ana Empowerment Zone Corporation.
Business Plan: Implementation Data Regarding The Santa Ana Empowerment Zone. Utilizing A
Strategic Dialogue Process. June 30, 2004.

151
that provides individuals access to jobs that pay livable wages, defined by FEZ as
pay that approximates the area’s median income.
FEZ also argued that livable wages are already part of the labor market. This
is explained through the concepts of “industry clusters” and “occupational ladders.”
According to a FEZ research project, “industry clusters” were specific industries that
were growing and had higher paying jobs. The “occupational ladder” image depicted
the labor market as a series of steps, beginning from entry-level positions that did not
pay well, to higher-level positions that paid closer to or above the median hourly rate
for Orange County.

Figure 4.4: Occupational Ladder

Source: City of Santa Ana Federal Empowerment Zone: Research and Development
Infrastructure Project, Final Report—Phase One: June 2003.

152

In the view of FEZ, workers start at the entry level in industry clusters with
occupational ladders that can lead to livable wages for those individuals who develop
specific skill sets.

Figure 4.5: List Skills in Document

Source: City of Santa Ana Federal Empowerment Zone: Research and Development
Infrastructure Project, Final Report—Phase One: June 2003.

153
The concepts of industry clusters and occupational ladders suggest that
poverty is not caused by the labor market or the absence of jobs that pay livable
wages but by the shortfall in skills and knowledge of given individuals. By defining
livable wages as being available in the labor market, the FEZ document proposed
another “win-win” framework for workers and business owners. However, this
framework systematically erases social differences. It assumes that the labor market
operates efficiently, allocating hourly rates commensurate exclusively with skill
levels and work experience. It also assumes that workers are evaluated primarily on
the basis of knowledge and skill sets. People with high skills automatically get paid a
higher wage.
In short, people are not to be judged on the basis of race, gender or class—or
other forms of social difference. Going back to the image of Ivan Perez, although the
techno-peasant is evidently a racialized worker (Mexican immigrant), a gendered
worker (male), and a classed worker (not a professional and highly skilled worker,
but a low-skilled worker), this framework rhetorically de-racializes, de-classes, and
de-genders the worker; and it simultaneously re-inscribes the disembodied worker
within a framework of the entrepreneur. However, the above framework not only
seeks to turn Ivan into an entrepreneur through these forms of disembodiment; this
entrepreneurial discourse begins to create a common social position and economic
interests between the business owner and the Mexican immigrant worker. They are
both on the same side. Business owners are not exploiting Mexican immigrant
workers; and, Mexican immigrants can become business owners if they so wish.

154
This entrepreneurial discourse, however, goes beyond defining Mexican
immigrants workers as entrepreneurs. It also naturalizes the role of government as an
entrepreneurial agent. This is evident in the sub-text in the article about Ivan. The
story was also about how government had transformed itself into an entrepreneurial
agent. The narrative constructed local government as an entrepreneurial agent in
three ways. First, unlike the social service model that putatively develops and
encourages dependency on government for income support, this new form of
entrepreneurial government promoted and encouraged economic self-sufficiency. In
this case, government services assisted people to obtain economic self-sufficiency by
orienting them towards the labor market (and away from government income
support). On entering the Daisy Wheel Network, Ivan became a “service navigator.”
The “service navigator” category, in contrast to a term like “service utilizer” used in
Welfare language, suggests that government is a ship that takes the person to a
destination. Consistent with temporary support, the Daisy Wheel serves only as a pit
stop, a transitional support, on the way to finding a job.
Secondly, the article portrays government as an entrepreneurial agent by
virtue of its orientation to the labor market. For instance, the Daisy Wheel diagram
shows multiple links between the WORK Center and a long list of employment
related services (Figure 4.6). This long list of support services conveyed a clear
message: the system of service is here; all you need is the desire to turn your life
around.

155
Finally, the article depicted government acting in an entrepreneurial way. The
story did not convey a sense of bureaucracy: it took only one day to set Ivan up with
all these supports. The partnership was incredibly efficient in working with Ivan. The
bottom line for the Daisy Wheel “company” was to transition individuals into gainful
employment. Transitioning a person into the labor market, in particular, required the
active collaboration of nonprofit agencies, government agencies, and community
residents. The Daisy Wheel diagram, moreover, made no distinction between
government and nonprofit organizations, suggesting that government was
intrinsically a public-private partnership.

Figure 4.6: Hands, Workforce, FEZ, Navigator

Source: City of Santa Ana. Federal Empowerment Zone Newsletter. March 2003.

156
The urban regime’s entrepreneurial discourse actively created a common
social position between businesses, grassroots organizations, government, and
Mexican immigrants. However, the active construction of a shared entrepreneurial
interest among these actors entailed the erasure of social and political differences.
The active erasure of social hierarchies also masks the differential way in which the
system of workforce development policies and tax incentives assists businesses over
workers. The following two sections describe the ways in which the reconfiguration
of the local state since the mid-1990s has been geared more toward business
profitability than to addressing the social inequality at the heart of urban hardships.
This will be apparent in an examination of how the Redevelopment strategies have
been used to bolster retail interests in downtown Santa Ana. The entrepreneurial
discourse has also been used to promote the commercial interests that cater to
(White) middle-class consumers over low-income consumers (Mexican immigrants).
Downtown businesses that cater to Mexican immigrants are defined as anti-
entrepreneurial.

FIGHTING POVERTY IS GOOD BUSINESS: FORGING A SYSTEM OF
TAX-REDUCTION INCENTIVES
While the entrepreneurial discourse seeks to create a common class position
between Mexican immigrant workers and business owners, each actor differentially
benefits from the resources of Santa Ana’s newly re-tooled local state. Businesses
clearly benefit from the workforce-development resources and tax incentives, not

157
just workers. This system of resources and incentives is documented in one of Santa
Ana’s EDD business-oriented packets intended to attract and retain business in the
community. The glossy cover reads: “EMPOWERMENT, ENTERPRISE,
GROWTH.” The packet itself unfolds into three sheets facing the reader, with the
left flap reading: “INVESTMENT, INCENTIVE, SUCCESS.” The packet describes
a system of benefits consisting of six state and federal incentives: (a) sales or use tax
credits; (b) manufacturers’ investment tax credit; (c) business-expense deduction for
lenders; (d) net interest deduction for lenders; (e) net operating loss carryover; and
(f) hiring credits and training for employees.
These six incentives, which generally seek to reduce the costs of production,
can be placed in three categories. The first category focuses on reducing labor force
costs. These workforce incentives include a hiring credit that reduces the state
business income tax for a qualified business by the amount of wages paid to one or
more qualified employees. Over a five-year period, a business could potentially
receive $31,570 or more in tax credits per employee.
A different City brochure explains the process in more detail:
EXAMPLE: On February 1, 2002, you hire an employee who meets one of
the qualifying criteria. The employee works full time an entire year at your
Enterprise Zone business (2080 hours) at $10.12/hour. Your hiring credit
would be calculated as follows: Year One: ($10.12 x 2080 hours = $21,049) x
50% = $10,524.
If the employee continues into the second year, the credit would be $8,419
(i.e., [$10.12 x 2080 hours = $21,049] x 40% = $8,419). In the third year, the
credit would be $6,314 (i.e., [$10.12 x 2080 hours = $21,049] x 30% =
$6,314). The credits for the fourth and fifth years would be $4209 and
$2,104, respectively. Each of these credits is on a per-employee basis.
Business owners can employ more than one person.

158
In addition to the hiring tax credit, the City also offers “free-of-charge”
services through the one-stop Santa Ana W/O/R/K Center. As mentioned earlier, the
W/O/R/K Center offers a number of services, including: (a) job listings (businesses
can post job openings for free); (b) on-site services (businesses can test, interview, or
screen job applicants at the center); (c) on-the-job training (businesses can receive
reimbursement for 50% of the costs of training a new employee); and (d) work
experience (businesses receive reimbursement for 100% of the costs for providing a
training site for an unemployed person). This includes a “rapid response team” to
reduce a company’s unemployment insurance liability for employees facing layoffs
or facility closures; a federal wage and work opportunity tax credit per employee.
The second category of incentives reduces the investments in productive
costs. The sales and use tax credit covers the costs of certain machinery, machinery
parts, data-processing equipment, and telecommunications equipment purchased for
exclusive use in Santa Ana’s Enterprise Zone. On a yearly basis, a company is
eligible for tax credits on qualifying machinery costing at up to $1.45 million. Items
that qualify include machinery and replacement parts used in the manufacturing,
assembly, or production of goods that were purchased and delivered to a business
located in the Zone after June 8, 1993. It also includes machinery used to process and
cook food items; and, air and water pollution control devices associated with a
manufacturing operation. In addition, a 6% tax credit to qualifying manufacturers
can be combined with the sales or use taxes. The brochure states: “This credit…can
potentially be combined with the Enterprise Zone Sales or Use Tax Credit, netting

159
businesses 13.25% or more state income tax credits for the same property. The credit
carryover ranges from 8 to 10 years, depending on the size of the business.”
The third category of incentives focuses on accessing local, regional, and
global markets. In a packet of marketing materials that advertises the City of Santa
Ana’s services to businesspeople, this emphasis on global markets is conveyed by
three overlapping maps, beginning with the city and moving outwards to a regional
and then a global market. Visually linked, these maps drive home the point that
locating in Santa Ana can help a business become competitive in a global economy.
Two of the services that concretely link local businesses to foreign markets
are the International Business Center and the Foreign Trade Zone. The International
Business Center promotes trade opportunities by bringing international business
development and capital resources to one location. The Center serves as the
exclusive host of the Mexico Trade Center, Mexico's headquarters for international
trade in the Western United States, Nacional Financiera, Mexico's largest
development bank, and the Japan External Trade Organization's Senior Trade
Advisor for California. Additionally, the Center also partners with the U.S.
Department of Commerce, the California Technology, Trade and Commerce
Agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Small Business
Administration, as well as numerous private enterprises, local chambers of
commerce, and educational institutions such as the University of Southern
California, UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton. Services provided by the Center
include: export/import counseling, trade contacts, finance and insurance assistance,

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Figure 4.7: Local, Regional, International

Source: Empowerment, Enterprise, Growth. Package describing benefits to
businesses. City of Santa Ana, Economic Development Department. Date unknown.

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export/import seminars, marketing support for international and domestic trade
shows, referrals to state and federal government trade support services, matchmaking
with foreign business delegations and coordination of overseas trade missions.
Santa Ana’s Foreign Trade Zone is a secured area within the U.S., where
merchandise can be admitted without the immediate payment of U.S. Customs duties
or Excise taxes. Importers and exporters can take advantage of the facilities within
the Free Trade Zone as an arena in which to conduct international business.
Merchandise admitted into the Foreign Trade Zone can be repacked, relabeled,
cleaned, sorted, sampled, exhibited, destroyed, processed, assembled, manipulated,
or exported, all without paying U.S. Customs duties while in the Foreign Trade
Zone.
Fighting poverty is indeed good business. Santa Ana’s urban regime leaders
have been able to transform the local state into a system of labor-force coordination
and tax-reduction incentives to support local companies. By using workfare policies
to organize a flexible, low-wage labor force and by using various hiring and tax
credits to lower investment and operational costs, local state agencies assist
businesses to become more competitive in the global economy. Moreover, fighting
poverty provides urban regime leaders with an ideological justification to build a
system of support for businesses at the same time that they incorporate grassroots
organizations into the economic growth coalition.

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UP-SCALING DOWNTOWN SANTA ANA: CATERING TO MIDDLE-
CLASS CONSUMERS
Another way that the City fights poverty is by strengthening its commercial
and retail sectors in order to expand its tax base. Those resources are used to pay for
essential services, such as fire, police, and public works. Focusing primarily on Santa
Ana’s Downtown, the city has deployed a systematic set of policies related to
housing, businesses, and amenities, including art and entertainment venues, aimed at
the middle- and high-income consumer. The civic entrepreneurs involved in the
redevelopment of the area have taken the traditional role of the “place entrepreneur,”
that is someone who promotes a given space, place, or locale in order to generate
economic revenues.

DOWNTOWN SANTA ANA: A PLACE FOR WHITE MIDDLE-CLASS
CONSUMERS
In May, 2003, the downtown development department unveiled a vision
poster for the downtown. CityLine ran a headline: “City Unveils Next Phase of
Revitalization for Downtown Santa Ana” and the drop head indicated support: “The
City’s Vision Concurs with the Chamber’s Image Council Study.” The Downtown
Vision Poster, according to the Downtown Development Director, was to serve as a
“tool to enthuse investors and stimulate development and redevelopment in the city’s
downtown corridor.” This study considered options for improving Downtown’s

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image in order to attract commercial and retail businesses, a strategy consistent with
the place-promotion as approach that forms a part of an economic growth coalition.
Although the Downtown Vision Poster was never fully implemented, it
reveals the intention of urban regime leaders to gentrify this area of the city by
creating spaces for middle-class consumption. The strongest evidence that the City
is targeting the downtown area for gentrification is seen in the recently
commissioned Specific Plan for the Santa Ana Boulevard Area, what is called the
Santa Ana Renaissance Plan. This plan expands the area targeted for development,
including the downtown but extends to the 5 Freeway along Santa Ana Boulevard
(covering the French Park area discussed in chapter three). The Specific Plan is a
more powerful institutional tool than the Downtown vision poster, for if approved,
the City can use this legal document to re-designate land uses, turning residential
into commercial uses, and increasing residential densities allowing single-family
homes to be turned into multi-family luxury apartments. The Specific Plan can also
be used to phase out the use of light industrial uses, and to create incentives to turn
these into commercial and retail uses.
The City has used Redevelopment funds (from the Housing Set-Aside
Program) to purchase over 50 parcels in the aforementioned area. Many of the
properties were purchased at the height of the housing market in Orange County,
from 2000 to 2005, illustrating the serious intentions of urban regime leaders to
implement this plan.

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The Downtown Vision Poster and the Renaissance Plan reveal a broader
strategy to develop the Downtown area as part of an effort to attract middle-class
consumers. This is legible in the City’s investments in cultural amenities,
restaurants, and housing since the mid 1990s. In the Downtown, the City has used
Redevelopment funds to create an arts district. This includes purchasing and
refurbishing a building and turning it over to the a nonprofit organizations, the
Orange County Contemporary Arts Museum. This museum is part of an Artists
Village, which includes the Santora Arts Building (where artists rent individual work
spaces) and a separate building for art students from California State Fullerton.
The City has created a museum district immediately north of the Downtown.
The more prominent places include the Discovery Science Museum and the Charles
W. Bowers Memorial Museum. With regards to the Bowers Museum, the City has
invested in expanding this museum, in preparation for the addition of a permanent
display from the British Museum. The City has also invested in other cultural
organizations, such as Kidseum and St. Joseph’s Ballet, both next to the Bowers
Museum. In addition, the City sponsors and supports gatherings in this area. It
promotes an exhibition of artwork at the Artists Village the first Saturday of each
month. It helps pay for the publicity of ArtsWalk, an annual event to give exposure
to the City’s artists.
The City has partially subsidized several restaurants in the Downtown that
cater to a middle-class, professional consumer. One example is “Memphis,” a
restaurant specializing in Southern cuisine. The City paid for the remodeling of the

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facilities, assisted with all the planning approvals, and expedited the alcohol permits.
Another example is “Proof”, a martini bar next to Memphis in the Downtown. The
City had not approved a full-fledged bar in twenty years, due to a flurry of incidents
and crime in the establishments catering to Mexican immigrant patrons. This martini
bar, however, targets young professionals. (In 2004, the City approved the
development of One Broadway Plaza, a 37-story building, that will be the tallest
building in Orange County and will focus on attracting professional firms.) The City
allowed Proof not only to serve alcoholic drinks, but also extended its hours of
service until 2 AM, unlike other establishments in Downtown that have to close by
midnight.
This set of policies that creates incentives for providing cultural and culinary
amenities in Santa Ana’s Downtown goes hand in hand with recent policies that have
promoted housing that attracts a high-income group. For instance, the City has
encouraged and supported a slew of high-density, luxury apartments and single-
family homes to attract middle- to high-income residents to Santa Ana. Current
projects (which have been in development for several years) include: City Place (an
18-acre mixed-use project located across the street from Santa Ana’s Main Place
Mall, with 242 live/work townhomes and 60,000 square feet of restaurants and retail
space); Santiago Street Lofts (located within the Renaissance Specific Plan area, this
project consists of 108 loft-style units that allow the residents to both live and work
in the same place); and the Olson Lofts (through a public/private partnership, the

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Santa Ana Redevelopment Agency and The Olson Company constructed 70 new
live/work lofts in the heart of Santa Ana's Artists Village).
Other development projects
47
include Cordoba Courtyards (45 units, Spanish-
style courtyard housing); 1
st
and Cabrillo Towers (6-acre mixed-use project, which
will contain 320 units within 3 buildings); Santa Ana Residential Village (an 8-acre
mixed-use project housing 423 residential units with 3 to 8 story live/work,
townhomes and flat units, including 150 condominium units within a 24-story high-
rise tower and 8,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space); and perhaps the most
ambitious, SKYLINE at MacArthur Place (the tallest residential luxury high rise
condominium towers in Orange County with approximately 800 units, advertising
itself as “the most upscale urban alternative for couples and professionals seeking a
contemporary lifestyle”).
Altogether, these projects will add over 2000 housing units targeting upper
income individuals and households. As a City Council member stated, “These high-
density places will bring back Santa Ana to its heyday, when we were the cultural
center of the County.” These high-density places would likely not have been
approved if they were affordable housing units for low-income residents. For
instance, the City of Santa Ana 2005-20009 Consolidated Plan, which lays out how
the City will use federal, state, and local housing funds calls for only thirty-five new
affordable housing units over the course of five years.

47
For fuller descriptions, see: http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/business/CurrentProjects.asp

167
An interesting case for housing development for low-income residents is the
Artists Lofts, located in the Artists Village. The City subsidized these housing units
so that they would be accessible to professional artists with low incomes. The
Artists Lofts is zoned as a mixed-used area, allowing for housing, work, and
commercial uses. While all units allow artists to both live and work in their homes,
some spaces also allow retail to occur in the bottom units. This sort of housing,
work, retail facility caters to the professional artists who can sell his or her art. The
City supports this type of low-income housing because it targets professionals who
can contribute cultural capital to the community, which fits into the broader policies
promoting a specific type of cultural amenities.
The cultural and culinary amenities and middle- and high-income housing
development suggest that the City is systematically targeting a middle-class and
professional consumer and resident. However, these developments also target more
than just a middle- and high-income consumer. They also target a White consumer.
This class and racial project of targeting middle-class and White consumers is visible
in several key marketing pieces produced jointly by the City of Santa Ana and the
Chamber. One of these is Santa Ana: Community Guide. The front cover contains
seven images promoting the city as “A Place For You.” Presented in cascading order,
the images display various city attributes—redevelopment opportunities, high
culture, family, and business.
Inside, the marketing piece provides highlights several themes: community
safety, variety of home architecture, high quality education, an active Chamber of

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Commerce, upscale restaurants, and an arts district containing public art. With few
exceptions, most of the people in the packet are White, and their attire evokes a
professional background and middle-to-upper-class income. White businesses,
owners, and consumers go unnamed as the norm. There is apparently no need to
mention that they are White. Businesses are also considered White unless otherwise
noted. However, when Latinos appear in this magazine they are marked as Latino
businesses and Latino patrons are named as such. This is odd because the majority of
patrons for Downtown business are Latino, not White; and, the majority of the City
is Latino (close to eighty percent as of 2000). If anything, the norm should be the
other way around: “Latino” should not be marked.
Not naming Whiteness is part of a broader pattern that marks the City’s
institutional investments. Redevelopment funds have been used systematically to
create a system of cultural and culinary amenities and housing projects that cater to a
White middle- and upper-income consumer and resident without, at the same time,
acknowledging this racial and class bias. This bias, so deeply ingrained and invisible
among urban regime leaders, seems to lead to investing White, middle-class
establishments for the purposes of expanding the tax base; and, it masks the negative
effects on businesses that cater to low-income Mexican immigrant consumers. As
the next section explains, businesses catering to lower-income Latino consumers do
not receive the same level of institutional support as the previous businesses and
developers. Indeed, these businesses are viewed as anti-entrepreneurial.

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DOWNTOWN SANTA ANA: GRINGOLANDIA AND ETHNIC CLEANSING
At the unveiling of the Downtown Vision Poster, the Downtown
development director, Matt Lamm, made it a point to ensure that Latinos were
included in this new vision. He was quoted in the CityLine article as saying:
the right level of adaptive reuse of existing buildings and new development
could provide a full array of “economic textures” able to serve the Latino
population, including immigrants, as well as anybody who desires to be in an
urban setting … We want to continue to build upon what we already have
going successfully in the Downtown…We have a wonderful and active
Latino marketplace that can continue to be augmented, along with increasing
the momentum of the creative zone with its influx of media professionals and
businesses while expanding upon arts and culture as a main thread.

Why the emphasis on active business development being compatible with the
Latino community? Much of the proposed development falls squarely within perhaps
the most vibrant Latino merchant enclave in Orange County. Downtown Santa Ana
is divided between west and east Fourth Street. The west side caters to a mostly
White middle-class consumer. Most of the City’s Redevelopment investments have
been geographically concentrated on the west side, which is closest to the
government and professional buildings containing professional firms and workers.
East Fourth Street businesses cater to a Spanish-speaking and predominantly
Mexican immigrant population. In general, the area has a lot of foot traffic and is a
gathering place for the Latino community. This business enclave hosts the annual
Fiestas Patrias (meaning “Homeland Festival,” although the name was changed to
Fiestas de las Americas), which attracts 70,000 to 100,000 people, by far the largest

170
event in Santa Ana. Although the Downtown Vision Poster does not acknowledge
this explicitly, it would oust those businesses from Downtown. Thus, the
development director’s rhetoric is in response to ongoing tensions over the future of
Latino businesses in Downtown.
This interpretation of the City’s involvement in Downtown emerges in the
Azteca News, a local newspaper, which covers issues for a businesses catering to
Mexican immigrant customers. This newspaper ran an article describing a debate
between two Downtown business owners concerning the impact of the City’s
policies on businesses catering to Mexican immigrant customers. Sam Romero, a
longtime community activist and small business owner in the downtown area, takes
issue with the City’s Downtown policies:
Ethnic cleansing is what they attempted to do in the Balkans...This is not
going to happen here, but the plans [for this area] are very focused on
removing us from here and to turn Santa Ana into a “gringolandia.” They
have never included us in their programs or informed us of their future
development plans.

He cites the problems that Northgate Market experienced in opening up a
grocery story in the area. Northgate Market is a grocery store chain that caters
specifically to Mexican immigrants, three establishments in Santa Ana. When
Northgate Market owners attempted to open a store in Downtown Santa Ana, the
Planning Commission placed many obstacles before allowing it to locate in this area.
To Sam Romero, this was a sign of trying to keep out businesses catering to Mexican
immigrants. Throughout the article, Romero cites many other examples of unequal

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treatment including the Artists Lofts in Downtown area (which does not attract
Mexican immigrants as tenants), the support to restaurants that target middle-income
consumers (such as Memphis), the rise in parking meter costs which inhibit his
business customers (who tend to have less disposable income and stay longer periods
in the downtown area), and the lack of security guards and police patrols for east
Fourth Street compared to that available to the Artists Village.
In the same article, a different vision of Latino businesses and Mexican
immigrants comes from Art Lomeli, a dentist whose business is located at the border
of East and West Fourth Street. Lomeli’s views are important because at the time the
article was written, he was the president of the Downtown Santa Ana Business
Association. He has been an advocate for the business interests of the west side
Fourth Street. Lomeli casts Latino businesses as anti- entrepreneurial because he
believes the enclave is the site of paternalistic and clientelistic practices.
He claimed that Latino business owners are backward and unethical:
“[Downtown business catering to immigrants] take advantage of new immigrants,
selling products at an elevated price.” He argues that some of these businesses are
racist.
Some businesses claim that Hispanics do not wear size ten and so do not buy
shoes that size. Others also do not try to sell extra large shirts because in their
estimation, Mexicans are a short people and thin. There are jewelry stores
that charge interest rates over thirty percent.

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His solution is to bring
entrepreneurial diversity, diversity of services, better products, greater
competition … Our view is to convert Fourth Street into a commercial artery
where the whole world comes. We cannot exclude Anglos just because they
don’t come here…This is a free country, where everyone has the right to live
a better quality of life. Our interest is for growth and not to be mediocre or to
have a social philosophy of ‘I deserve this or that.’ … it is about working
towards community well being, but not for the benefit of a few that claim to
be victims and always saying, ‘give me, give me, give me.’ Romero’s
“ethnic cleansing” politics fosters division.

Lomeli’s views suggest that business owners catering to an immigrant
community are considered anti-entrepreneurial because they only cater to one type of
consumer (Latino immigrants), offer a limited type of products, and take advantage
of immigrant customers by charging high prices. This discourse that labels Latino-
oriented businesses as anti-entrepreneurial also casts them as racists because they
only serve a Latino clientele. What this entrepreneurial discourse hides is that the
City’s efforts to expand its retail base to increase tax revenues is anchored in a
system of resources for businesses that cater to a predominantly White and middle-
class consumer. Political elites do not see these policies as racists.
48
They would not

48
A version of this anti-entrepreneurial discourse has also been used to justify regulation
over businesses elsewhere that cater to immigrant consumers. In addition to the discussion of the
proposed new laundry facility along arterial avenues in chapter three, the City has attempted to
regulate Latino-oriented business such as street and mobile vendors. Recently, this includes a plan to
regulate mobile vendors by placing specific times and mandates [restrictions?] over the business hours
and places. It also includes regulating places where vendors can park their sales vehicles at night. It
has also been used to regulate whether organizations can feed and house the poor in Downtown Santa
Ana. An example is the Catholic Worker lawsuit.

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acknowledge that their policies are promoting an “ethnic cleansing” of businesses
and turning Downtown Santa Ana into “gringolandia.”

CONCLUSION: A LOCAL ENTERPRISING CITIZENSHIP REGIME
This chapter documented how the urban regime has used an entrepreneurial
discourse to justify the reconfiguration of the local state into a system of workforce
development and tax supports for manufacturers, and a gentrification project that
supports specific retailers and developers targeting a White, middle-class consumer
and resident. From the mid 1990s onwards, the Chamber and the EDD developed a
two-pronged economic growth agenda based on two strategies: (a) tapping into
federal and state workforce development resources and tax incentives for productive
capital investment for the manufacturing sector; and (b) using Redevelopment funds
to restructure the Downtown area, by creating cultural amenities to improve the
City’s image and to re-zone the area to attract greater retail development targeting
middle-class consumers.
However, the urban regime’s focus on fighting poverty through workforce
development and Downtown redevelopment was not intended to address the
structural economic and political conditions that are arguably driving the urban
hardship that Mexican immigrants face in Santa Ana. These programs did not seek to
change business practices and labor market dynamics associated with temporary and
contingent work, low service-sector wages, labor market discrimination, minimal
work place regulation, and lack of health benefits. These programs also did not

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encourage a moratorium on housing rent increases, rent strikes, or new affordable
housing units for low-income residents. Instead of challenging neoliberal policy
trends that decreased funding for affordable housing, health services, and other social
welfare programs, urban regime leaders programs deepened this neoliberal ideology
through an entrepreneurial discourse. The urban regime’s entrepreneurial discourse
connected fighting poverty and to Downtown redevelopment is connected to the
discourse of neighborhood self-reliance. The political-economic interests of affluent
neighborhood associations as property owners, as seen in the gentrification project in
French Park and the laundromat, coincide with the Chamber’s business development
interests as part of a broader economic growth coalition.
The discourse of neighborhood self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency is
the basis for I am calling an “enterprising citizenship regime”. This enterprising
citizenship regime refers not only to a specific model of the citizen as being self-
reliant and self-sufficient. Enterprising citizenship refers a set of policies and
programs that follow a neoliberal ideology, and a set of formal and informal relations
between elected officials, business leaders, and increasingly grassroots organizations
that actively promote increased state involvement in supporting businesses and
property owners. The enterprising citizenship regime producing political subjects
that support the decreased involvement of the local state in providing a safety net.
The pervasiveness of this enterprising citizenship regime raises several
important questions about Mexican immigrant empowerment in the context of these
neoliberal public-private partnerships. Can grassroots organizations working with

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Mexican immigrants develop a progressive form of citizenship? The next two
chapters explore the ways in which Mexican immigrants can use a denationalized
citizenship to develop a progressive agenda, and the ways in which the local state
can shape the nature of empowerment in nonprofit organizations.

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CHAPTER FIVE
Incorporating a Progressive Movement:
Building a Community Center in the Delhi Neighborhood

On June 17, 2002, over three hundred people gathered to celebrate the
inauguration of a newly constructed community center and expanded park in the
Delhi neighborhood, a historically segregated Mexican barrio in southeast Santa
Ana. The loud trumpets of a local mariachi band opened the festive event, followed
by the welcoming words of the community center’s Executive Director, Irene
Martinez. After acknowledging the many neighborhood residents, union
representatives, business leaders, school district officials, city and county staff, and
nonprofit organizations that helped bring this $8.5 million project to fruition,
Martinez introduced a number of elected officials, who stood ready to deliver
proclamations. Most of these elected officials were Latino, representing city, state,
and congressional seats. One by one, speaking in English and Spanish, the elected
officials pointed out that the community center was a concrete symbol of community
empowerment and collaboration. At the end of these speeches, a long-time
neighborhood leader punctuated, “This community center means we won’t require
government services in the first place. We will be able to stand on our own two feet.”
The audience applauded loudly, neighborhood activists and elected officials alike.
This chapter examines the ways in which Mexican-origin neighborhood
leaders and grassroots organizations used a community empowerment process to

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pressure political leaders and city government managers to construct a community
center in a predominantly immigrant and politically marginalized neighborhood in
Santa Ana. I view this community empowerment process as an instance of what
immigrant political agency scholars variously call a “denationalized” local
citizenship. Denationalized local citizenship is a complex community empowerment
process that mobilizes “belonging” and “identity” in a particular place to enable
immigrants to claim specific social rights and thereby press the local government for
resources to address community hardships (Flores and Benmayor 1998; Holston and
Appadurai 1999; Sassen 1998, 2003, 2005; Smith and Guarnizo 1998).
Denationalized local citizenship, in particular, suggests that, even without possessing
full political, civil, and social rights, immigrants can draw upon distinct aspects of
citizenship (that is, on their sense of “belonging” and “identity”) to obligate local
civic and political leaders to provide a basic level of social and economic support to
ameliorate urban hardship. This denationalized local citizenship can lead to a
progressive agenda that advances social rights for marginalized populations to
address social inequality.
The central problem with denationalized citizenship, however, is that it does
not explain why urban regime members would feel compelled to respond to demands
for social rights by immigrants, especially when Mexican immigrants have a very
weak footing in the political field and very little financial capital to affect the
outcomes of local elections. Forcing the urban regime members to respond to
Mexican immigrant demands is quite complicated in Santa Ana. Through various

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public-private partnerships that seek to address hardship, the urban regime has
captured the community empowerment discourse and many of the key civic
networks outside the political arena. As urban political geographers argue, these
public-private partnerships, in particular, tend to de-politicize local community
mobilizations by turning them into technical processes. That serves to contain the
mobilizations within a civil society-state relationship and keeps them from spilling
over into the formal political arena, where they would otherwise directly engage the
local state.
In mobilizing to get the Delhi Community Center built, leaders in a
predominantly immigrant neighborhood in Santa Ana, were able to utilize the
notions of “belonging” and “identity” to not only claim social rights (construed as
the right to a basic level of social and economic support) but also develop sufficient
political capital to influence elected officials, local government managers, and other
key civic leaders to support this project. The analysis of this community
empowerment process reveals four important aspects in the development of a local,
progressive citizenship and political capital to engage the urban regime and the local
state. First, the presence of activist networks linked to second-and third-generation
Latinos and to long-term Mexican immigrants built a sense of ethnic solidarity
around the recognition of their second-class and unequal citizenship. Secondly, these
leaders made strategic organizational decisions to mobilize sufficient political
resources, focusing them on the process of building a community center. Thirdly,
when local Latinos won federal and state electoral offices, members of the Delhi

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neighborhood movement were able to take advantage of that political opportunity.
Finally, the neighborhood movement also managed to gain support for the project
from key City management staff.
This chapter also documents the way in which local state actors and political
elites responded to this progressive citizenship, largely by outflanking and guiding
the community empowerment process in a neoliberal direction. Eventually,
moreover, the urban regime incorporated the Delhi neighborhood movement into the
City’s broader empowerment mode of the local state, focused on neighborhood self-
reliance and economic self-sufficiency. The urban regime accomplished this in three
ways: (a) it protected local dollars for politically privileged projects and used state
and federal intergovernmental dollars to support the construction of the community
center; (b) it devolved full financial responsibility for the community center to the
nonprofit organization; and (c) it incorporated the nonprofit center into the City’s
workforce development partnerships and the neighborhood development
infrastructure.

CLEANING UP THE CITY’S JUNK YARD: THE DELHI NEIGHBORHOOD
MOVEMENT
An important aspect of the Delhi neighborhood is that it includes a mix of
Mexican immigrants and second- and third-generation Mexican American families.
Although the latter are the demographic minority, they have a strong attachment to
their neighborhood and extensive social and political networks. The majority are

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immigrants, divided into those who have been in the neighborhood for more than
twenty years and those who arrived after 1986. These three networks came together
through the community empowerment process, forging a “citizenship” covering
belonging, identity, and rights. The coming together of these three social networks in
this specific place formed the basis for a progressive citizenship.

A LEGACY OF ACTIVISM: IMPROVING CONDITIONS IN A
SEGREGATED BARRIO
Founded in the 1860s, the Delhi neighborhood is a historically segregated
Mexican barrio in Santa Ana. Mexican immigrants working in the seasonal
agricultural industry in Orange County lived in Delhi, which became incorporated
into the City of Santa Ana in 1927. Although the neighborhood’s geographical
boundaries have changed over the years, it presently covers approximately five
hundred homes with about 2500 residents.
Juanita Carrillo, who turned 107 years old in 1998, remembered that in the
early 1900s, this was one of the few places where she and her husband could
purchase land and build a home. Other older residents also remembered the
experience of being segregated (Figure 5.1). “That was how things were back then,”
said Antonio M., a sixty-eight-year-old resident who was raised in Delhi:
Our neighborhood was ignored, and we were ignored, too. At that time, we
were one of the few Mexicans in the City; there weren’t many of us here.
And they didn’t want us anywhere. I even remember waiting till the late-
night show when new movies came out, and we even had to sit in the

181
balcony. I even remember when we were not allowed to go to Edison
Elementary, right across the street from here.

Figure 5.1: Delhi Historical Picture

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

Despite being separated from the rest of Santa Ana, Delhi had a very active
social life, oriented primarily around the local church (Haas 1995). One of the
neighborhood residents born in the 1920s recalled being involved in year-round
activities sponsored by the church:

182
Since we can remember, we had the yearly Jamaica,
49
and then once a year,
we held the desfile on September 16, and also La Reina contest. And then
there was the procession for the Virgen de Guadalupe in December. We also
had catechism here, like by the 1950s when they added the community room
to the church. People from all around Santa Ana came to catechism and
church here, because this was one of the few places they could hear Sunday
mass in Spanish.

Other older residents who were born and raised in Delhi also remembered
their involvement at that time. “Our families have been in this country for many
years, sometimes even longer than White people,” Mario pointed out, “but still we
weren’t able to buy a house north of Warner Avenue, which is where White people
lived, but how many White people live there today? It’s all Mexican now.”
Manuel Esqueda, a well-known Mexican American leader in Santa Ana who
grew up in the Delhi neighborhood, remembered coming back from the Korean War
and seeing neighborhood segregation with different eyes: “We had just come back
from fighting for this country in the Korean War, and then later others of us went to
Vietnam. We died for this country, and here we were being treated like second-class
citizens.” He recalled: “When we came back, we became involved in making sure
the school district did not take the school away from Delhi neighborhood, and we
were also involved in creating a Delhi park.” Mr. Esqueda was part of a Mexican
American generation that became involved in Latino civic and political activities in
Santa Ana in the 1950s and 1960s. Mr. Esqueda became one of the first Latino

49
This was the neighborhood’s annual kermesse (charity bazaar) or jubilee to raise funds for
the Church. It usually attracts between ten and fifteen thousand people over the course of three days.

183
bankers in Orange County and founded Serafines, a scholarship program for Latino
students. Others from this area, such as Hector Godinez, the first Latino postmaster
in Orange County, became prominent Latino leaders from the 1960s to the 1980s.
While second- and third-generation Mexican Americans remembered their
involvement in the community change, dating back to the years of segregation,
World War II, and the Korean War, Mexican immigrant activists recalled their
involvement beginning in the mid-1960s. This coincided with the arrival of Father
John Coffield, the priest appointed to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in
the Delhi neigborhood. “El Padre Juanote,” one resident remembered, “was really
tall, and he made all of us get more involved in the church.” Federico, another long-
term immigrant resident, mentioned: “Father Coffield came from El Monte and
before that he was in Boyle Heights. We were told that he had been removed from
there because he was creating problems. He was radicalizing the lay people.”
Indeed, soon after Father Coffield arrived, he organized people to force the City to
make public improvements. Federico recalled: “He was the one who really helped us
build the Delhi park, and then to add lighting and pavement in this area. He even had
the City promise us a swimming pool.” Another person recollected:
But what we got was more like a big fish tank. Seriously, it was like a big
fish tank sitting on top of the grass, not [a swimming pool] in the dirt…I
think the kids used it several times, but then some people got drunk and threw
bottles inside and they closed it and took it away.

Father Coffield organized residents to form a nonprofit organization in 1969.
He involved the Junior League of Newport Beach and the California Reserves of the

184
National Guard to establish a nonprofit agency, the Delhi Community Center (Figure
5.2). The National Guard donated two Quonset Huts, and a local family gave a piece
of land in front of the Church. The Delhi Community Center was a place that helped
organize social activities and to bring health and human services to local residents,
such as Well Baby Clinics and Women, Infant, and Children services (WIC). In the
early 1970s, Father Coffield invited several Jesuit priests to help with the community
organizing efforts. One of these Jesuit priests recalled:
It was a tough neighborhood. I remember this because the same night we
arrived someone broke into the Church and took the chalice, and there we
were chasing him all around the neighborhood. We couldn’t catch him, but
we recovered the chalice a couple of days later…. We basically continued
Father Coffield’s work. We asked people to join us in painting and fixing the
Church, and they did. We also started holding retreats with neighborhood
residents.

Several of today’s more active immigrant residents in the Delhi
neighborhood traced their community involvement back to the retreats organized by
the Jesuit priests. As one person put it:
This is when I really learned about myself. Back in Mexico, we were not
allowed to be involved in church activities except showing up on Sundays.
But [the Jesuit priests] really taught us about how we have to tend not only to
the spiritual needs of people, but to their daily needs. We went to regular
retreats, and we were also taught that we belonged in this society, that our
families were just as important as familias Americanas [White families] and
that we had to make sure we defended our rights.

185

Figure 5.2: Delhi Center, Picture 1—Seniors

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

186
Figure 5.3: Delhi Center, Picture 2—Porch

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

One key point of contention between neighborhood residents and the City
revolved around the City’s storage yard, or what residents referred to as the City’s
junkyard. It had been set up in the middle of the neighborhood, between the church
and the elementary school sometime around the mid-1960s. People remembered it
because it was quite loud and dangerous. Large trucks moved in and out, twenty-four
hours a day and no fence encircled it. The entrance was along the Central Avenue,
the route children took to get to Monroe elementary school. Children on their way to

187
school often had to wait till the trucks left the yard. The City Yard also had a
mechanic shop that operated twenty-four hours a day, producing screeching noises
throughout the day, which were especially pronounced in the late evening when they
worked on City vehicles. One resident recalled, “The screeching noise was so loud
you couldn’t really sleep at night.”
One of the Jesuit priests recalled a meeting with City officials, where they
proposed buying the Church property in order to expand the City Yard. “Can you
imagine this?” he exclaimed. “Can you imagine what this request revealed in terms
of what they thought about the Delhi neighborhood? Delhi neighborhood is about
parking City vehicles, not about people. They just didn’t care about Mexicans.”
Several residents remembered that around 1980, after several retreats, they went
house to house asking people about their needs. After two years of engaging
residents, they realized that one of the key issues had to do with the safety in the
Delhi park and the dangers posed by the City Yard. Church members organized a
community meeting in 1982 with the City Manager and then-Mayor Don Griset.
“They were so scared about coming to the neighborhood,” Juana recalled, “that they
even had police officers accompany the City Manager, the Mayor, and the other City
staff, because this was how negative the image of Delhi neighborhood was to them.”
Soon after this meeting, the City removed the mechanic function from the City Yard
and placed a fence around the area, but it still served as a place to park large City
vehicles.

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“But, what stuck with me,” says Nicanor, one of the organizers of that
meeting, “is how they associated this neighborhood with filth.” This immigrant
resident explained:
You know, this is why the Mayor came with the police that night. And I
won’t forget for as long as I live what [a key City staff member] said. We
asked them to replace the old bathroom in the park, which was filthy. And he
told us that this is what this neighborhood deserved.

Delhi neighborhood leaders developed a critical understanding of the
problems in the neighborhood. The dirty bathrooms, inadequate swimming pool,
dangerous City yard, restrictions on purchasing homes outside elsewhere, and the
City’s attempts to purchase the land on which the Catholic Church stood were all
read as indicators not only of government neglect but of its active discrimination
toward the residents in Delhi. The spatial segregation experienced by Delhi residents
led to the development of an ethnic and racial solidarity across generations and
native- and foreign-born residents. Neighborhood activists understood these
conditions as a sign of the unequal power relations between Mexican-origin, low-
income residents and White, middle-class residents. The City’s policies towards
Delhi neighborhood reflected and reproduced these unequal power relations.
The physical aspects of Delhi neighborhood and the socioeconomic
conditions of families deteriorated in the 1980s and early 1990s, and activists coming
from both networks interpreted this as a function of inequality.
50
For instance,

50
In many ways, the social and economic conditions that impacted Santa Ana in the late
1980s and 1990s, were already visible in the Delhi neighborhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

189
Mexican American activists who had been born in the United States and had fought
in several wars interpreted the social segregation as a sign of second-class
citizenship. For long-time Mexican immigrant residents, the neglect towards the
neighborhood marked a lack of recognition of their membership in the community of
Santa Ana and their contribution as immigrants to society in general. They
understood the neglect as a sign that they did not belong to Santa Ana. Viewing the
neighborhood’s problems as a reflection of unequal power relations became a critical
aspect of the movement to remove the City Yard. It also led to making demands on
the urban regime to provide support to address hardship.

FOCUSING ON THE NEIGHBORHOOD PARK AND COMMUNITY
CENTER: 1980s-1990s
Mary, a second-generation resident who was ten years old in 1979, reflected
on the change she experienced in the 1980s:
I just remember that after 1979, the activities we had in the park just stopped.
There was nothing to do. And so we formed our own little gang, especially
when more people were coming from Mexico to live in this neighborhood.
We just had nothing better to do.

Neighborhood leaders believed that a way to address these problems was to
expand and improve the park.
51
Two organizations actively kept the issue of the park
and community center alive during the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s: the

51
It is not clear how they arrived at the decision to focus on the park; it seems that this is tied
to years of engaging the City on this issue.

190
Orange County Congregation of Community Organizations (OCCCO), an inter-faith,
countywide agency dedicated to organizing communities to address community-
identified needs; and the Delhi Center, the neighborhood nonprofit organization
established by Father Coffield in 1969. Both organizations actively pressured the
City to construct a community center and expand the park.
52

After the Jesuit priests left Delhi in 1984, OCCCO entered the neighborhood
to invite people to participate in the organizing efforts. Delhi neighborhood residents
involved in OCCCO focused their initial organizing on a citywide effort to improve
the educational system in Santa Ana.
53
After that campaign ended, Delhi
neighborhood’s Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the OCCCO continued
working with residents around the improvement of park facilities, the removal of the
entire City Yard, and expansion of the park. They organized another community
action meeting, and on October 28, 1986, over three hundred people from Our Lady
of Guadalupe Church met with the City Manager. At this meeting, he agreed to a
major clean up of the City Yard, and he also stated that the long-term plan was to
remove it entirely. “At this time,” recalled one of the neighborhood organizers, “the

52
They were not working with each other because in the early 1990s there was a shift in
leadership in Delhi Center, which created a rift. Some Board members left the agency and went to
OCCCO.
53
Affiliated to the Pacific Institute for Community Organizing (PICO), OCCCO carries out
its community organizing efforts through Local Organizing Committees (LOC). In 1984, OCCCO
brought the Santa Ana Unified School District and the City of Santa together to make a commitment
to provide more support for students, such as tutoring and after school programs. This education-
focused effort culminated in a community action meeting of over one thousand people at St. Anne’s
Church in Santa Ana, in the northwest corner of the Delhi neighborhood.

191
idea of building a community center in the City Yard had not come up. We really
didn’t even know it was possible to have the City build a community center in this
neighborhood.” However, despite the commitment, the City Yard remained
untouched for three years.
On January 25, 1989, twenty neighborhood leaders from Delhi’s LOC met
with a high-ranking staff member from the City’s Parks and Recreation Department
and other City staff and were told that the City Yard would be removed and that an
expansion of Delhi Park was being planned. However, little was done, so the
neighborhood leaders again organized a meeting with the City Manager and two
hundred neighborhood residents. At this meeting, the City Manager agreed to build a
community center and to bring a full-time supervisor to the expanded Delhi Park.
The City Yard was to be removed by the summer of 1991, and the Park would be
expanded after that.
54

The second agency involved in the mobilization of the neighborhood was the
Delhi Center. Its participation in the efforts to construct a community center and
expand the Delhi Park began formally in 1991 with the hiring of Irene Martinez as its
Executive Director. Soon after Martinez was hired, she proposed to the Board of
Directors that it was important to expand the Delhi Center itself, which had been

54
Beginning in November 1992, OCCCO worked closely with Ted Moreno, who had been
recently elected as a City Council member representing Ward One. Moreno promised Delhi’s LOC
members that he would press for the removal of the City Yard and the park expansion.

192
located in the two World War II Quonset huts that Father Coffield had obtained.
Martinez argued:
Delhi Center really needed to move to a larger facility. This is because the
Latino population in Delhi, Santa Ana, and Orange County was growing fast.
And especially after the 1985-1986 IRCA campaign, where Delhi Center
helped regularize over 5,000 families…after that campaign, Delhi Center was
like a household name for many new Mexican immigrants in Orange County.
So they began to come to Delhi Center for all kinds of assistance, not just
immigration. They needed jobs and referrals to health and human services….
But, you also know why we needed to expand the Center? Because the
Quonset huts were just not a dignified space to serve our community. I mean,
here we are, as a community providing all the work for the County, and yet
what do we get? This small community center? It is not a dignified space for
our community.

From 1991 to 1995, the Delhi Center actively worked with the Parks and
Recreation staff to develop an agreement whereby the Center would run the
programs in the new community center. These conversations were held directly with
the Executive Director of Parks and Recreation. After the Executive Director of
Parks and Recreation retired, Delhi Center engaged the new Executive Director of
Parks and Recreation, who believed in collaboration, consistent with the philosophy
of “reinventing government.” As one of the City staff remembered:
The City’s decision to give Delhi Center the responsibility to run the
programs at the new facility can be traced to two reasons. First, it was
consistent with the philosophy of [the new Executive Director of Parks and
Recreation], who believed strongly in collaborative relationships. Secondly,
he also believed that Parks and Recreation did not necessarily have to provide
all the services. The organization and delivery of community services could
be achieved through collaborative relationships with a number of nonprofit
organizations. Other collaboratives were formed during this time. It was part
of this whole trend of collaboration.

193
Most of the advocacy process to build a new community center and expand
the park occurred directly between the neighborhood leadership and the City
Manager and the Executive Director of Parks and Recreation. This pressure came
largely through individual meetings with high-ranking staff members and community
action sessions. As a result, on June 5, 1995, the City Council approved three
important items: the conceptual plans for the Delhi Park expansion and Delhi
Recreation and Community Center; an agreement between the Delhi Center and the
City for operation of the Delhi Recreation and Community Center; and the issuance
of a Request for Proposals for a design plan for the park expansion and the
community center building.

BROKEN PROMISES: CREATING NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICAL
POWER
Although the community center’s conceptual and design plans were approved
in 1995, several financial and political obstacles stalled the construction. The first
had to do with the 1994 Orange County bankruptcy, in which the City lost much of
the money it had invested in the County’s investment portfolio. By the early part of
1995, the full impact of this bankruptcy began to be felt. According to staff
members, the loss of these funds forced the City to place many public works and
capital projects on hold indefinitely, including the construction of the new Delhi
Community Center. For instance, instead of allocating the full amount of funds for
the construction of the building, in November 1995, the City allocated only $418,595

194
to continue with the design. Even though the City set aside $1 million from the
Redevelopment Agency’s budget, this money was never appropriated for the
construction of the building. The lack of funds made the second obstacle an even
thornier issue: the land where the Center was to be constructed was contaminated.
Not only did this delay the construction, it made the entire project more expensive.
As the 1996 election-year politics geared up, a third issue became a critical
obstacle. Council member Ted Moreno, who represented the ward that includes the
Delhi neighborhood, was running for re-election. His relationship with the rest of the
City Council became extremely tense. A then-City Council member recalled: “It was
a contentious moment not just because everyone knew that Moreno was positioning
himself for mayor. It was bad because Moreno kept name calling everyone, making
it difficult to do City business.” The relationship between Moreno and the rest of the
Council was so strained that it thwarted any efforts to gain citywide political support
for any additional funds for projects in Moreno’s ward. “Believe me,” added the
then-City Council member, “nothing was going to Ward One, because he would take
the credit for it.” Mr. Moreno won re-election to his council seat in 1996,
foreshadowing another four years of lack of citywide support for the project. A Delhi
Center Board member said: “If we didn’t have access after 1996, the door was
definitely shut closed on us after 1998. This is when Moreno was indicted for
bribery. Even though he wasn’t convicted till late 1999, nobody wanted to touch him
after the FBI indictment.”

195
Without citywide political support for the Delhi Center, the construction was
on indefinite hold. The failure to allocate local resources revealed a fourth obstacle:
local grassroots and nonprofit organizations lacked sufficient power to generate the
political will that was needed to support this project. One of the reasons behind the
lack of power was that OCCCO and the Delhi Center were not coordinating their
efforts. While the Delhi Center worked directly with Parks and Recreation, OCCCO
was working directly with the City Manager’s office. Indeed, there was lingering
conflict between these two organizations dating back to 1991, when Irene Martinez
was selected as Executive Director of the Center. Consequently, neighborhood
organizations could not forge the strong consensus that would have been needed to
effectively exert pressure. They were largely working independently towards the
same objective, but they had not combined their political resources.
The City continued to drag its feet in terms of allocating funds for the project.
After additional pressure, in 1997, the City finally agreed to organize a planning
committee to assist the architect in developing the conceptual design for the
community center and park expansion. The City invited representatives from
OCCCO, the Delhi Center, and Monroe Elementary School. Facilitated by the
architect, the meetings focused on the underlying concepts for the community center.
At first, these meetings were not easy for the participants. As one of them noted:
These were tough meetings because we could not agree on what we wanted,
and the City staff just sat back witnessing our internal conflicts. You know,
those of us sitting around the table had a history. We didn’t necessarily see
each other eye to eye, and each one of us felt we were the ones who really
represented the neighborhood.

196
Another person agreed:
For example, I didn’t agree with the fact that most of the activities in the
Center were going to be for men. But how about women? And what about
older residents? And others wanted to focus on youth and gang members. But
what about the immigrants who are the majority of this area?

These meetings, however, began to create a shared understanding between
both neighborhood organizations. One of the neighborhood residents participating in
these meetings recalled, “We began to see that we all had a concern about our
families, our children, and especially the needs of different generations, and the
cultural heritage of the Delhi neighborhood.” As part of the planning process, the
City also sponsored a field trip to various community centers in Southern California
to gain ideas. Several Delhi residents who participated in this tour recalled the
importance of this field trip:
I don’t think they really realized what they did when they sent us to see
different community centers. It’s like our eyes bulged out whenever we saw a
community center and began to think about the possibilities for our
community. We raised our expectations. We were not going to settle for less.
The field trip confirmed that all we were asking for was a dignified space for
the community.

As the leadership from the OCCCO, the Delhi Center, the Delhi
Neighborhood Association, and Monroe Elementary interacted more with each other,
they discovered that each organization knew different things about the community
center that the other did not because each organization was being invited to different
sets of meetings with city representatives. They concluded that the City, intentionally
or unintentionally, was providing each organization with different information about

197
the status of the project. Nicanor remembered that “[the City] told us that the project
was the number one priority for the City’s lobbyist in Sacramento, but we found out
later directly from Assemblyman Jim Morrissey’s office that we weren’t even in the
top three.”
In addition, despite the hold on capital projects in Santa Ana, Delhi
neighborhood leaders noticed that other park development projects were being
funded. “Why was Fisher Park remodeled and not Delhi Park?” asked Mary,
reflecting on the difference in political power between Delhi neighborhood and other
affluent city neighborhoods. “That’s because they are north of Seventeenth Street [an
affluent area of the city].” Nicanor added, “Why the Police Station, and then all those
things being built in the Downtown? We heard those projects cost the City millions
and millions of dollars. Like the Police Station cost over $100 million, and then
there’s that Museum. Don’t tell me that was cheap!”
For Delhi neighborhood residents involved in this effort, stalling the
construction of the community center was not a question of a lack of money. It was a
question of political will. It became clear that in order to obtain resources,
neighborhood residents had to develop the political capacity to influence budget
allocations. A Delhi Center board member understood the lack of funding as a sign
of unequal power relations:
In part, in light of budget cuts, it made apparent who the real players in the
City were, and who the City really wanted to support, and it wasn’t us. They
support people with the big bucks, and our community doesn’t have big
bucks.

198
The Board member also stated:
What it meant, really, was that the projects with the greatest political support
got funded over others. Someone else got those million dollars. This was the
political reality. The public works projects that went through were the ones
with support from all the political players, including the City Council and
other city leaders.

CREATING POLITICAL WILL
Developing political will was particularly important because the councilman
representing Ward One was already sidelined from the City’s formal policy-making
regime, and because the Delhi neighborhood did not have a significant number of
registered voters. If the surrounding areas are counted, there are no more than 500
people registered to vote in the area. This is in a city with over 80,000 registered to
vote, with a 50% voter turnout on Presidential elections.
Neighborhood leaders created political will to address this power inequality
in three ways. The first was to reorganize the neighborhood’s civic networks,
particularly by expunging the City staff from a neighborhood-based coalition. The
second strategy was to use Delhi neighborhood’s extensive social networks to create
a direct relationship with the growing number of Latino elected officials at the city,
county, state, and federal levels—who in turn could exert pressure on City staff and
elected officials. Finally, the two organizations included more organizations in the
efforts to pressure the City, that is to say, they broadened ownership to other public,
private, and nonprofit organizations.

199
REORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOOD CIVIC NETWORKS
One of the first decisions was to form a coalition of neighborhood
organizations, with the ultimate goal of using it to make connections to the emerging
ethnic-political networks that had become available as more Latinos won elections to
representative seats. The neighborhood coalition began with OCCCO, the Delhi
Center, and the Monroe Elementary School. Then the parent association at Monroe
Elementary joined along with the Delhi neighborhood association. The neighborhood
association was primarily led by second-generation residents and long-time
immigrants. They had not gotten involved before, but this Recreation and
Community Center was an attractive project. One of the leaders of the neighborhood
association recounted: “I always wanted to see a community center where we could
drink coffee.” Another neighborhood association leader emphasized that she “wanted
a place where we did not have to see police dogs going into people’s homes.”
The neighborhood coalition was qualitatively different than the public-private
partnerships established by City agencies to promote self-reliance or economic self-
sufficiency. First, the organizations came together because they believed that the
neighborhood was being treated unfairly. Secondly, this neighborhood coalition did
not have any funding to distribute among the member organizations, as compared to
the Federal Empowerment Zone or Workforce Investment Board funds. Thirdly,
these community organizations decided not to include City representatives in the
coalition itself. As one of the coalition leaders underscored, “We didn’t want [the

200
City] to see our weaknesses and turn them against us.” These organizations did not
allow the City to be the hub of the Delhi neighborhood’s civic networks.
The Delhi neighborhood coalition decided that it needed to better coordinate
the efforts of the groups that it comprised, and Irene Martinez was appointed
coordinator. Members agreed not to meet separately with the City and to share all
information with each other. Because the City’s broken promises had had a direct
impact on the credibility of the neighborhood leaders, it was also necessary to
rebuild credibility with the internal constituencies of each organization. Nicanor
remembered that:
whenever the City broke its promise, it made us look bad with our
membership. Nos tiraban de locos, pues quedabamos mal. Nos hacian la
burla: que bonitos planos, pero nunca se va hacer nada en este barrio. No
somos nada. They accused us of being crazy, and we looked really bad. They
piled ridicule on us: What great plans, but nothing is ever going to get done
in this neighborhood. We’re worthless!... They would say that the leaders
were just dreamers. They were naïve to trust the City. The City does not care
about you.

“This made me mad,” said the neighborhood leader.
It’s like we were not worth their investment. It’s like what that Executive
Director had said about our neighborhood, they thought our families were
nothing but filth…. The good thing is that we each had different groups. For
example, OCCCO was really connected to the Church group, and Delhi
Center had connections with other families with younger children and more
recent immigrants.

One of the Delhi Center staff members recalled: “We began to do outreach,
but within our own programs. We had not done this as systematically as we did this
time.” One of the OCCCO leaders stated that over the course of two years, he spoke

201
to more than 1,500 people in the neighborhood about this issue. The outreach was
conducted during specific times of the year, for instance in the summer during the
annual Church festivities. One of the neighborhood association leaders remembered
that people who had been away from the neighborhood for a while returned to the
Jamaica, and the community center was the subject of conversation.
The word got out that the neighborhood organizations were planning another
series of community actions to pressure the City to begin the construction of the
building. A resident who comes from a family who has been in the neighborhood
since the early 1900s mentioned that even some of the people who were in prison
were asking about the Center: “They were really excited, ‘cause they saw this as an
opportunity to change when they got out of prison. They even wanted to know what
they could do to support this effort.”
After the neighborhood coalition formed in late 1997, it began to gear up for
the upcoming 1998 election campaigns. Members decided to sponsor a Candidate
Forum, and they formed a planning committee. Residents identified the candidates
running for School District, State, and Congressional offices that they wanted to
invite, but they did not invite City Council candidates because the local government
was not willing to support projects in Ward One until Moreno’s term ended in 2000.
Given that, they wanted to build a direct connection with other levels of government,
so as to avoid having the City be the sole access points to the networks with county,
state, and federal representatives.

202
The Forum planning committee also developed questions designed to inform
candidates about the need for the community center and to gain their commitment to
support this project after they were elected. They found people who would ask the
questions. They did another round of community outreach in the neighborhood. As
the OCCCO leadership engaged local parish members, the Delhi Center worked
through the Delhi neighborhood association to inform residents about the community
center and to develop questions for the Forum. Monroe Elementary informed parents
and agreed to hold the Forum in the school. The neighborhood association contacted
its members. The Candidate Forum drew close to 300 residents, who filled the
elementary school’s auditorium. All invited candidates showed up. It was facilitated
bilingually in Spanish and English. Members of the audience bluntly asked the
candidates to describe their priorities and in what ways they would support the
construction of the Delhi Recreation and Community Center if elected. The State and
Federal candidates all expressed their support.

SCALING UP THE (ETHNIC) POLITICAL NETWORKS
The results of the 1998 elections were very important in terms of the funding
for the community center. After the election, the neighborhood coalition organized a
planning session with the three candidates who had won seats. The first was
Assembly Member Lou Correa, who narrowly beat out the incumbent, Republican
Jim Morrissey. The second candidate was Loretta Sanchez, who won re-election in
the 46
th
Congressional District. The third candidate was Joseph Dunn, who won the

203
seat for California Senate District 34. These were the only three state and
congressional seats controlled by Democrats in a predominantly Republican-
controlled county. The strategy was to work directly with State and Congressional
representatives to secure funds and to apply pressure on the City of Santa Ana to
allocate resources towards the construction of the community center.
The Coalition continued to work with City staff. After 1998, the City put the
Delhi Recreation and Community Center as the number one priority on its list for its
Sacramento lobbyist. Although this move made it appear that the City had allied
itself with the neighborhood coalition, the funds were still not forthcoming. During a
series of meetings with the City, Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez’ office intervened
to facilitate one of them. Martinez, the Delhi Center’s Executive Director, stated that
Congresswoman Sanchez had made it clear that unless the City gave priority to the
Center, her office would not support the City on other pending projects in
Washington, especially the City’s Federal Empowerment Zone application (which
had just been submitted).
The neighborhood leaders also used their extensive connection with ethnic
networks to mobilize political networks. “Essentially, we sandwiched the City,” said
a Delhi Center board member. “You see, we formed a neighborhood coalition that
excluded City representatives because we wanted to be in control of what we wanted
to do, not what the City wanted. But, we also got other people involved in this effort,
especially people with a lot of influence.” He continued:

204
We brought in our secret weapon: Mr. Esqueda. He doesn’t like public
meetings, but boy was he meeting with people behind closed doors. And, you
see, he was a particularly important in all of this because almost every
political leader in the City knows who he is. Everyone knows, for example,
that Mayor Pulido received a scholarship from his Serafines [educational
foundation]. Everybody owes him…and, you know, he’s a banker: when he
cashes in his chips, you better pay back.

Reflecting on all the civic and political networks that were mobilized at that
time, Martinez reflected: “I think that at some point, City leaders just felt too much
pressure around this project. Wherever I went, everybody would ask me about when
the community center was going to be built.” She remarked on the importance of the
Latino-based social events in terms of applying pressure on Latino elected officials
in Santa Ana—those that had the political power to allocate resources to the Delhi
Center.
I think the turning point for Mayor Pulido came at the Hispanic Influentials
Event that year. That’s where all of Orange County’s Latino leaders show up,
and Delhi Center was being honored as the agency of the year. And all eyes
were on Mayor Pulido to make a commitment. And he did! After that event,
the whole City began to work with us to get this project funded.

In the fall of 1998, the City proposed building the project in two phases, with
approximately $3 million to be spent on the first phase. To complete the second
phase, they promised to identify state funds, low-interest federal loans, or bonds.
Nicanor, one of the neighborhood leaders, saw through these promises:
All this stuff that we found out during this process, you know what it showed
us all? We found out where the real filth was, and it wasn’t the neighborhood,
but the people in the City that don’t have our interests in mind. All the deals
that they have going on. That’s where the filth is, not in this neighborhood.

205
BROADENING THE COALITION: A PREFERRED FUTURE FOR THE
NEIGHBORHOOD
When it became clear in 1998 that there was sufficient political will to
allocate the funds to build the community center, the Delhi Center organized another
round of strategy sessions with various community stakeholder groups to begin
crafting a clear plan about what work the community center would do and what
activities it would offer. An important side effect of this was a broadening and
deepening of the sense of ownership over what the community center represented.
One of the neighborhood leaders commented:
The building of the community center was just one aspect, but what was it
going to achieve for the neighborhood? This was pretty important stuff. I
mean, no other organization in the city has the power to decide what
programs will be at a community center. Everywhere else, it is the City’s
Parks and Recreation Department that coordinates the programs.

Bringing together a cross-section of community residents was important in
order to ensure that the Delhi Center’s autonomy to plan was directly connected to
neighborhood organizations that were planning and shaping the types of programs
and services to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Martinez emphasized that what
was most important was to have community members identify the key issues they
wanted to see addressed, and that they developed this through a participatory
community-based action research process.
The agency decided to use an action research process called Future Search, a
planning process rooted in dialogue not technical expertise. Through this

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participatory planning process, the agency intentionally engaged a very diverse set of
neighborhood residents, staff members, community leaders, residents, and program
clients and volunteers. The group had a lot of diversity as it included young people,
recent and long-term residents, immigrant and native-born residents, and senior
citizens who had lived in the area since birth. Allies of the neighborhood, such as
public agencies with resources to support the neighborhood vision, were also
included. The group met at the Johnson Center in Santa Ana College in January
1999. Through this planning process, the participants prioritized four areas: health,
education, economic development, and arts, culture, and recreation. Participants also
developed initial strategies and short-term action plans for each of these areas.
But this meeting had even greater significance, since it deepened the
connections among the individual participants and organizational leaders. A
participant representing a County agency indicated that he had “never participated in
a planning process where he felt so committed to addressing the issues identified.”
The importance of these connections was visible eighteen months later. On August
24, 2000, the City proposed reducing the size of the building from 26,000 square feet
to 15,000 square feet. Martinez recalled the meeting where this option was presented
to her and other neighborhood leaders:
And when we met later with the Mayor to discuss this point, they basically
said “take it or leave it. It’s our final offer.” This really affected me,
because…you know…here is a community that really needs to have this
center, so something is better than nothing. It’s hard to walk away. But then
we decided not to accept anything less. It helped to know that we had built a
solid group through the conference and other activities. So, we decided not to
take the offer, but to stand behind our conviction.

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This time the neighborhood coalition, drawing on the social and political
networks it had organized over the past two years, launched a protest. They went to
the City Council meeting, and the media covered it. One of the Delhi Center staff
members remembered:
We set up carpools. I think that one of the organizations even hired a bus.
One of the neighborhood residents got his truck drivers involved, too. Other
residents from the neighborhood turned out, and others who knew about
Delhi neighborhood.

The group had a negative experience at the City Council meeting, as one
Delhi staff member recalled:
They had security guards at the City Council waiting for us. We were not all
allowed to go inside. In fact, they did not consider our item until the very
end, even though they saw us all there. We didn’t leave that meeting until,
like, after 11 PM. And then they decided to postpone the action—and not
vote on cutting back the funding for the center.

Figure 5.4: Delhi Center Construction

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

208

Figure 5.5: Delhi Center Celebration

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

209

Figure 5.6: Delhi Center Completion

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

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CITY INVOLVEMENT: OUTFLANKING THE NEIGHBORHOOD
MOVEMENT
The Delhi neighborhood residents and organizations were very active in
demanding that the community center be built. This is evidence that a denationalized
local citizenship and a place-based identity—in this particular case, a Mexican
identity that transcended generations and encompassed U.S. citizens and non-citizen
immigrants living in the city of Santa Ana—can operate locally to mobilize social
networks to advance social rights. Nevertheless, the City’s political, civic, and
government leaders were not passive actors in this neighborhood movement but were
actively engaged in shaping its direction. At times they resisted the community
center project, primarily because it was Council member Moreno’s district and
because giving priority to other projects would have greater electoral payoffs.
Eventually, however, the City staff and political leaders approved the project at its
original square footage, and in the end it would be constructed all in one phase. Even
as they extended support for the project, however, the City government leaders also
maneuvered to outflank the neighborhood movement. This occurred in three ways.
First, to promote intergovernmental funding strategies for the community
center, the City tapped into the networks that the coalition had forged with state and
federal elected officials. This protected the City’s local dollars so they could be
allocated to the growth coalition. Secondly, City government devolved full
responsibility for running the community center to the Delhi Center, thus freeing the
City from having to cover staffing and maintenance costs it would have to cover in

211
other City-run facilities. In the final step, the City incorporated the Delhi Center into
the local government’s economic development strategy by locating the activities of
private-public partnerships at the community center, under the auspices of a
nonprofit organization, the Delhi Center itself (see Chapter 6).

PROTECTING LOCAL DOLLARS: SEEKING INTERGOVERNMENTAL
RESOURCES
The total cost for the community center project was approximately $8.5
million. To cover that, the very networks that the neighborhood coalition had
developed to pressure the City were “mined” by the urban regime leaders in an effort
to identify and obtain funds from state and federal resources so that the City could
protect its general fund and tax-increment money for pro-growth projects. Yet, the
members of the neighborhood coalition never questioned how the underlying
interests of the City's elite was benefiting from these inter-governmental funding
strategies.
The City had already contributed nearly $1 million to pay for the
architectural blueprints and to decontaminate the eight acres of land. During his first
six months in office, Correa secured $800,000 of special district funds by working
with the State Assembly. In early 1999, when the City of Santa Ana received a
Federal Empowerment Zone designation, an additional $1 million was directed
toward the community center’s construction, and a year later, another $1 million was
earmarked for the project. After the community strategy planning process, the Delhi

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Center organized a partnership with the City to apply for a one-time, $2.25 million
bricks-and-mortar grant offered by the California Youth Authority, as part of a
program to build youth centers instead of prisons. With the collaboration of a broad
array of youth-serving organizations that had committed to providing services
through the Delhi Recreation and Community Center, the staff of the Delhi Center
and the City co-wrote the proposal. The existence of completed architectural
drawings, the City’s donation of the land, and its financial capacity to manage the
construction phase of such a large project were strong elements of the proposal.
The City also proposed to provide expertise in the area of facilities
management, and it enlisted the assistance of the Planning Department and the Police
Department to ensure that the Center would conform to planning and safety
standards. In addition, the offices of State Senator Dunn and Assemblyman Correa
also assisted with the preparation of the grant application. In exchange for accepting
State funds, which could only be donated to a nonprofit, the City agreed the Delhi
Center would become the official owner of the Recreation and Community Center.
The remaining financing was generated through a combination of matching funds
from private foundations and a direct-giving capital campaign.

DEVOLVING RESPONSIBILITY: PROMOTING THE SELF-RELIANT
NEIGHBORHOOD
The Delhi Center’s autonomy over the Recreation and Community Center’s
programming also meant accepting the responsibility to run the Center. This shifted

213
the entire responsibility for supporting and addressing neighborhood problems from
the local government to the nonprofit organization itself. The City does not pay for
utilities or provide staffing at the site. The Delhi Center’s costs for the facility’s
insurance alone are nearly $25,000 a year. Then there are maintenance costs and the
costs of all the programs offered at the site, which total close to $1.5 million
annually. The Delhi Center does its own fundraising to cover these expenses. In
general, it relies on contracts from the County, City, and private foundations, which
contain a percentage of the amount awarded to cover operational overhead costs. The
center also receives individual and corporate donations, which give it unrestricted
dollars to cover expenses. As was explained in chapter three, devolving
responsibility to neighborhoods to solve their own problems is part of a broader
strategy of promoting self-reliance in order to enable the local state to avoid carrying
the full burden of fiscal responsibility for the community. By promoting a rhetoric of
self-reliance, the City absolves itself of the responsibility to address community
needs.
The emphasis on self-reliance as decreased dependence on government
programs is also embodied in the Center’s programs and various aspects of its
physical layout. As will be described in more detail in chapter six, Delhi Center’s
programs emphasize disease prevention, health promotion, and capacity building.
These activities are not only designed to help improve conditions of the individual
and families. They also attempt to decrease the need for government intervention. As
the community leader stated in the inauguration celebration, “This community center

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means we won’t require government services in the first place. We will be able to
stand on our own two feet.” The physical layout of the agency supports the
philosophy of these programs. For instance, there is an exercise room and handball
court to help increase physical activity. There is also an employment service, a
computer lab, and classroom facilities to assist people with obtaining a job,
additional skills, or a high school diploma. These educational and employment
services aim to help people become economically self-sufficient.

ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY: INCORPORATING DELHI CENTER
INTO ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIPS
After the building was constructed in 2002, the Delhi Center had to raise
funding to cover its operational costs. Through the City’s economic development
program, particularly, the Daisy Wheel, (see chapter four), a public-private
partnership was formed with the Center to have it offer job development and
entrepreneurial training. This partnership deploys an explicit “enterprising
citizenship” rhetoric focused on economic self-sufficiency. The Center’s Executive
Director was even invited to sit on the board of directors of the Federal
Empowerment Zone’s Board of Directors. In addition, drawing funds from the City’s
economic development resources, the Center launched a job-location service that
includes assistance with resume writing, posting of available job listings (including
the City’s job-openings database), access to an Internet connection, and help in
honing interviewing skills. The Delhi Center also operates a program for

215
entrepreneurialism and small business development, which includes monthly
business roundtables, a yearly business exposition, and training for immigrant
woman who want to become child-care providers working out of their homes, among
other things. Finally, the Delhi Center has become entrepreneurial itself. It rents out
the community center facilities in order to pay for the building maintenance and
agency program costs. In 2005-06 fiscal year, the agency made about $100,000 from
facility rentals.
Figure 5.7: Delhi Center Childcare

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

216

Figure 5.8: Finding a Job

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

217

Figure 5.9: Entrepreneurial Training

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

218

Figure 5.10: Finding A Job or Managing Your Business

Source: Delhi Center Historical Archives

219
CONCLUSION
The Delhi neighborhood movement mobilized residents’ sense of place,
belonging, and identity in order to advocate for the construction of a recreation and
community center that would address the needs of Delhi residents. The City actively
resisted the movement until the neighborhood coalition successfully outmaneuvered
it and managed to embarrass the urban regime’s leadership. At that point, the City
appeared to support the project, but ultimately, it outflanked the movement. It did
this in three ways. First, it utilized the neighborhood’s own elected representatives to
help obtain state-level and federal financial support for the construction of the
community center, effectively removing the fiscal burden from the City. Secondly,
the urban regime leaders also manipulated the Delhi Center, the key neighborhood
nonprofit organization, by getting it to take financial and administrative
responsibility for the community center. Eventually, the community center was
integrated into the City’s economic growth projects, by forming a public-private
partnership through the Daisy Wheel, a City job-placement and labor coordination
program.
This series of events illustrates how government actors and political leaders
actively protect local resources so that they can be used for economic-growth
initiatives. At the same time, the urban regime leaders use public-private partnerships
to incorporate progressive neighborhood movements through a deployment of
rhetoric about the enterprising citizen and entrepreneurship.

220
However, the events are also evidence that immigrants can, in fact, take
advantage of a denationalized local citizenship to make demands on the local
government. This process, however, requires ongoing strategic decisions that use
elected officials and civic leaders to pressure local government. The result of these
community empowerment processes can help ameliorate hardship to some extent.
These movements, however, are highly susceptible to co-optation. In the next
chapter, I focus on the ways in which this incorporation happens at the level of
organizational, micro-level practices. In the case of the Delhi Center, its
incorporation into the local state did not occur after the neighborhood movement, but
rather took place during it, since the Center negotiated a form of empowerment that
the local state had already crafted. It shows that the state is a constitutive element of
organizations in civil society, not simply an external agent.

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CHAPTER SIX
Resisting Empowerment? Delhi Center and the Local State

The previous chapter documented a neighborhood movement that asserted a
critical form of denationalized local citizenship and made demands on the local
government for a community center. It also detailed how the urban regime leaders
incorporated this movement, by absorbing it into a public-private partnership. In
other words, after Mexican immigrants and grassroots organizations mobilized
around their sense of belonging and identity to make claims on the local government,
they were absorbed into a broader local economic growth coalition that has been
constructed since the mid-1990s. It has used the rhetoric of community
empowerment and individual self-reliance and economic self-sufficiency as a tool
for co-optation. The public-private partnerships at the heart of this economic growth
coalition constitute a local enterprising citizenship regime, which shapes how
Mexican immigrants influence the local state by producing specific political subjects
that actively support local state involvement in promoting business growth and
decreased state involvement in re-distributive politics.
Is it possible for a grassroots organization to resist the neoliberal form of
community empowerment? Does a grassroots organization even want to resist it?
Can a grassroots organization develop a critical form of empowerment that helps
immigrants claim social rights and challenge underlying forms of social inequality?

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An examination of how the Delhi Center,
55
a grassroots organization working with
Mexican immigrants in Santa Ana, has negotiated the politics of community
empowerment with local government agencies sheds light on these questions. The
Delhi Center is an appropriate case study because its empowerment approach
emerged through an intense engagement with state agencies. The Center has been
concerned with empowerment practices since the mid 1990s, around the same time
that the City’s urban regime leaders shifted away from the social service model of
local government and began to develop an empowerment approach focused on the
notion of the “enterprising citizen” that emphasizes neighborhood self-reliance and
economic self-sufficiency.
An extended case study of how Delhi Center cooperates with or resists the
local state’s neoliberal empowerment approach illustrates the extent to which a
grassroots organization can develop a social justice mode of empowerment, while
still receiving funds from local government agencies through public-private
partnerships. An analysis of Delhi Center’s empowerment approach allows us to
delineate the similarities and differences in the methods used by a grassroots
organization and by a local government agency to “empower” Mexican immigrant
residents in Santa Ana, and it reveals that the Center has attempted to create a hybrid
empowerment framework that combines both the developmental and social justice

55
In 2002, when the construction of the Delhi Recreation and Community Center was
completed, the City of Santa Ana turned its management over to Delhi Center. This dissertation
examines the Delhi Center from its founding through 2005.

223
form of empowerment.
56
This hybrid approach enables the nonprofit organization to
obtain funds from local government to provide essential resources to address
economic survival issues for Mexican immigrant clients. Within the hybrid
framework, the Center can also use the developmental empowerment approach to
help individuals develop community leadership skills while simultaneously seeking
to produce agents of change that can address the root causes of the hardship that
Mexican immigrants face.
This hybrid model, however, lacks an explicit political ideology that would
name the wage structures and high housing costs and unequal political power
relations that are the source of urban hardship. The decision to embrace a political
ideology is left up individuals who participate in the Center’s leadership
development process: they are free to support projects that question social inequality.
This failure to explicitly identify structural inequalities and unequal power
relations enables political elites and local state managers to incorporate the hybrid
community empowerment model into its public-private partnerships. The grassroots
and nonprofit organizations involved in this type of collaboration with state agencies
end up implicitly or explicitly supporting an empowerment process that lends
support to minimal state involvement, market-based solutions to urban problems, and

56
The developmental empowerment model encompasses the social service approach and
capacity-building approach to addressing hardship. Both are power evasive, focus on the individual,
and do not name social inequality as the root of hardship. In contrast, the social justice empowerment
model is the opposite of the developmental model. However, both the developmental and social
justice models assume that the state is outside of civil society, but the case of Santa Ana illustrates
that state agencies actively structure civil-society organizations, particularly in terms of
empowerment.

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a devolution of responsibility to the individual and civil-society organizations.
However, the skills developed through the Center’s leadership program can prepare
individuals to become involved in efforts that do, in fact, challenge social inequality.
Nevertheless, the Delhi Center, itself, does not deploy a social justice form of
empowerment. This gives it maneuver room so that it can participate in coalitions
that seek to develop critical policies, or, on the other hand, to work directly with
government.
My analysis also suggests that the developmental and social justice models of
empowerment are not entirely opposed to each other. Both models presuppose that
empowerment occurs in civil society and eventually targets the state, which stands
outside of civil society. They fail to recognize that civil society is already structured
by state action, particularly in nonprofit organizations. One of the key implications
of this insight is that state actors, working within a grassroots or nonprofit
organization, can shape the possible approaches or models for empowerment, and
this can occur even before the organization has developed a social justice
empowerment process. In the case of Delhi Center, even before the urban regime
incorporated Delhi Center into the economic empowerment agenda, the Center had
already incorporated the local state’s developmental form of empowerment into its
inner workings.
The first section of this chapter details the transformation of Delhi Center. In
1990, it was a voluntary organization focused primarily on residents of the Delhi
neighborhood; by 1994, it had become a social service provider offering various

225
health and human services to Latinos in Orange County (Table 6.1). The second
section describes Delhi Center’s efforts to reorganize its internal practices to address
the constraints imposed by the state’s social service model. The third section
documents Delhi Center’s transformation from a social service organization to a
hybrid social service/leadership development organization. This third section ends
with a description of Delhi Center’s hybrid community empowerment framework,
which combines the social service and community capacity building framework. The
last section discusses how Delhi Center’s empowerment approach enables it to work
simultaneously within both politically conservative and social justice frameworks.

Table 6.1: Organizational Phases
Areas Phase One (1969-1991) Phase Two (1991-1994)
Agency Role A host agency, as a bridge
between government agencies
& Delhi residents
An agency designing its program
interventions connecting Latinos
to services.
Staffing

Primarily volunteer and part-
time staff
Primarily full-time staff with
meager volunteer support
Funding Few sources but flexible use Diverse sources, mainly
government contracts, with little
flexibility
Program
Participants
Primarily as “volunteers”
organizing activities
Primarily as “clients,” without a
primary role in program
planning
Geography Delhi neighborhood, 92707
Zip code, Santa Ana

Delhi residents, multiple
“Latino” target populations in
Santa Ana & Orange County.
Programs Social support, referrals to
services, food assistance, &
ESL classes.
Health promotion, education,
social support, educational, and
training

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FROM A VOLUNTARY TO A SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANIZATION, 1969-
1995
Over time, the relationship between the Delhi Center and government
agencies has been very dynamic. But in the early 1990s, a particularly pronounced
shift occurred. By the mid 1990s, state agencies had moved from being an external
agent to the neighborhood and the Center—playing a minimal role in the internal
processes of the organization—to having a greater presence in the Center’s activities.
Not only did the state require the use of a social service model, but it also
significantly influenced the organization’s internal decisions related to social
strategies and staff resources.

A NEIGHBORHOOD-BASED, VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION: 1969 TO
1991
The Delhi Center, founded in 1969, is one of the oldest Latino-run grassroots
organizations in Santa Ana. Father John Coffield, a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe
Church, was instrumental in helping Delhi neighborhood residents create this
private, non-profit community-based organization. Among other things, he involved
the Junior League of Newport Beach and enlisted the support of the National Guard,
which donated two World War II Quonset huts to be used as the neighborhood’s
community center. As expressed in the organization’s Articles of Incorporation, the
Delhi Center had a constitutive relationship with state agencies. Delhi Center was
designed as a social service and leadership development organization during the

227
beginning of the Nixon Administration, but contained traces of Johnson’s Great
Society—including collaborations with the various federal and local agencies that
had developed during the Johnson administration. The Articles of Incorporation
specify the following purposes for the organization:
The specific and primary purposes for which this corporation is organized
are: To undertake programs and projects within and on behalf of the
community of Santa Ana in the areas of recreation, job training and
counseling, pre-school training, language tutoring, health services, legal
assistance, and home management; to develop leadership within the
community; and to cooperate with the Orange County Community Action
Council, Inc., the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity, and other
government and private agencies and institutions in originating and
conducting the programs set forth above (emphasis mine).

The Articles also stipulated the general purpose for the corporation, which
defined the role and responsibility of the organization as improving the conditions of
their own neighborhood, by fostering cooperation through community identity and
mobilizing community members:
The general purposes for which this corporation is formed are: To provide for
the community of Santa Ana in the County of Orange in the State of
California an organization by which the residents of said community may
cooperate to improve their community, and otherwise to create a sense of
community identity; and to enlist the interest and participation of the
community of Santa Ana in analyzing and meeting needs (emphasis mine).

Although the Delhi Center was designed as a leadership development and
social service organization, it focused mainly on organizing community-building
activities in the Delhi neighborhood. During the Center’s first organizational phase,

228
stretching roughly from 1969 to 1991, it was largely a neighborhood-based,
voluntary organization.
Most of the organization’s activities targeted neighborhood residents. As one
resident recalled, “This was still a time when we could only live in this neighborhood
[because of segregation].” Other neighborhood residents remembered that they used
to go to Delhi Center for social activities as well as training: “Someone would come
to the [Quonset] huts to teach us how to cook and sew, which was nice. But, we also
held birthdays there.” Its principal resources were its volunteers, not government
funding. Neighborhood residents, in particular, were a key resource for the Center’s
programs, volunteering their time to organize activities. Most of the board members
were from the neighborhood. The organization’s staff members, including the
Executive Director, worked mostly on a part-time basis, sometimes on loan from the
City.
During the Delhi Center’s first phase, the organization played a “bridging”
role between neighborhood residents and various city and county agencies. The
Center served mainly as a host site for City programs and County health and human
service programs (including the Women, Infant, and Child [WIC] Program, the
Well-Baby Clinic, meals for seniors, and English classes), by providing space so that
these programs could reach the neighborhood’s mostly Mexican-origin residents.
The Delhi Center’s bridging role made sense up through the early 1980s, when the
Mexican-origin population in Santa Ana was still relatively small yet highly racially
and economically segregated in specific and marginalized barrios. Along with Santa

229
Anita and Logan neighborhoods, Delhi was a well-known Mexican barrio in Orange
County (Haas 1995). The Center’s “bridging” role was thus tied to Santa Ana’s
history of racial and class segregation, and it provided a credible organization
through which public institutions could engage this highly marginalized community.
As a staff member recalled, “We basically were the ones that let the government into
the community, because without us, people didn’t really trust the government.”
During the mid-1980s, however, the Center became well known among
Mexican immigrants living outside the Delhi neighborhood. Along with a few other
nonprofit organizations, like the Catholic Charities of Orange County, the Delhi
Center played an active role in the implementation of the 1986 Immigration Reform
and Control Act’s (IRCA) regularization process. The Center helped over 10,000
families with their IRCA applications. Even after the period for regularization of
status lapsed, immigrants continued to rely on the Center for paralegal services to
assist with family reunification and citizenship applications. By the late 1980s, as
more Mexican immigrants entered Santa Ana and Orange County, the Center began
to assist Mexican immigrants—from other parts of the city and even the county—to
identify private and public resources, including housing and utility services,
document translations, health and human service referrals, food, and English classes.
Thus, the “bridging” role began to shift from one that was designed to give
government agencies access to Mexican immigrants in the Delhi neighborhood to
one that connected Mexican immigrants from Santa Ana and Orange County to
specific City, County, and private health and human service agencies.

230
Although Delhi Center was serving an ever-larger population, it was still a
semi-formal, volunteer-driven community organization. Most of its funding—
primarily from the Junior League of Newport Beach, the City of Santa Ana’s
Community Development Block Grant Program, United Way of Orange County, and
numerous local fundraising events (bake sales and resale clothing, for example)—
was quite flexible. These funds did not require elaborate or extensive reporting
requirements or evaluation procedures and could be used to support community-
driven needs and requests. Until 1991, the Center did not have a formal service
delivery system requiring professionally trained staff members. The organization did
not yet feel the intense pressure from government agencies to formalize its internal
management systems.
By the end of the Delhi Center’s first organizational phase, its relationship
with state agencies can be characterized in two ways. First, government was external
to the organization. The Center was a part not of government but of the
neighborhood and the broader Mexican-origin community, both immigrant and
second- and third-generation Mexican Americans. The Center was a way for
government agencies to enter the community to provide services, but the Center was
not implementing government projects. Secondly, local government presence in the
Delhi Center and Delhi neighborhood was intermittent at best. The City of Santa
Ana, for instance, was not engaging the Center as a partner in addressing City
priorities, as it would after 2000 with various self-reliance and self-sufficiency
initiatives. The external and intermittent presence of government agencies also

231
suggests that the Delhi Center was not an extension of the government apparatus.
These characteristics substantially shifted in the early 1990s, as the Center began to
obtain government grants to work with Mexican immigrants.

BECOMING A COUNTYWIDE SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANIZATION: 1991-
1995
Between 1991 and 1995, the Delhi Center developed into a more formal
social service organization. The shift towards a social service model, however, also
coincided with the appointment of a new executive director, Irene Martinez, in 1991.
Martinez developed the first formal strategic plan. It identified two crucial goals: (a)
generate more resources to meet the increase in service requests, and (b) move to a
larger facility. According to Martinez, because Delhi Center was well known among
the growing Mexican immigrant population in Santa Ana and Orange County, it
experienced a marked increase in demands for referrals to resources and services.
At some point, we did not have resources to staff the telephone, and we had
two typewriters and no computers. Our strategic organizational issues were
about “How do we keep the agency open?” At that time, remember, nobody
wanted to fund little agencies like ours.

To address this increased demand for services, Martinez focused on
identifying and obtaining resources from government agencies and philanthropic
foundations. The options were very limited, as Martinez recalled:
What were we supposed to do? On the one hand, we had a lot of people
asking for services. On the other hand, they were poor and couldn’t pay for
all these services. How were we supposed to generate resources for ourselves

232
to be able to help them? We had to go after government contracts and
foundations.

Martinez was very successful in obtaining government grants. Within a three-
year period, from 1991 to 1994, the organization’s budget grew from approximately
$60,000 a year, with roughly three part-time staff members, to over $400,000 a year
with about twelve full-time staff members. Most of this growth was due to obtaining
funds from state and local government agencies.
The success in obtaining government grants was also due to an increase in
local government agencies targeting nonprofit agencies to deliver social services to a
growing number of Latinos in Orange County. An administrator who worked for the
Orange County Health Care Agency linked this shift to broader federal and state
mandates to collaborate with nonprofit organizations:
We had to collaborate with agencies since the 1980s, but in the 1990s, there
was no alternative. Collaboration was the buzzword. Federal and state
agencies were requiring more and more that local agencies—counties and
cities—collaborate with nonprofit agencies.

The early 1990s was also a time when local government agencies began to
target the growing number of Latinos in Orange County. As a staff member from the
County indicated, “After the 1990 Census came out, government agencies were also
looking to collaborate with nonprofit agencies working with Mexicans.
[Government] realized there were Mexicans in our midst.” The philanthropic
community also noticed the increase in Mexican immigrants, a disproportionate

233
percent of whom were living in poverty compared to the general Orange County
population. The same staff member recalled:
Several studies at that time showed the concentration of poverty in the central
part of the County. If some people [public agencies and nonprofit
organizations] did not want to work with Mexican immigrants, they could not
avoid the fact that poverty was concentrated there. More funds went in this
direction, but it often was absorbed by the larger organizations, the usual
suspects.

The Delhi Center obtained government contracts in two steps. The first was
as a subcontractor to another agency. In 1991, The Cambodian Family, Inc., gave
Delhi Center a subcontract to work on a tobacco-use prevention project targeting
Latino parents. Working with Latino parents identified by The Cambodian Family,
Inc., the Center hired a staff person to provide educational workshops to Latino
parents around tobacco-use prevention. This subcontract marked the first time that
the Delhi Center implemented an intervention with Latinos that went beyond
responding to specific needs that recipients of the service themselves had identified.
Rather than working with whomever was seeking services, the organization
“targeted” members of the Latino population “at-risk” for a particular condition. In
other words, this contract required that the Delhi Center focus on a specific
subpopulation (in this case, Latinos at risk for tobacco use), identifying their specific
needs, and then providing an intervention that included educational materials or skill
building. This “intervention model” targeted individual behaviors as the source of a
problem in order to intervene with information, attitude modification, and skill-

234
building activities. This model did not focus on addressing social inequality, but on
individual behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.
This approach was also, as it is known in the parlance of government
contracts, a “categorical” one because it focused on one particular issue within a
community, in this case, tobacco-use, and the funding could not be used for other
purposes. The staff member hired using this grant’s funds was not allowed to address
other issues that people might have, such as a lack of health insurance, affordable
housing, employment, or neighborhood safety.
A year later, in 1992, the Delhi Center took a second step toward working
formally with state agencies. It received two government grants directly from the
California Department of Health Services. The first grant focused on tobacco-use
prevention activities for Latino youth participating in the City of Santa Ana’s sports
leagues. After gaining some experience with one tobacco-use prevention project, the
Center, as a lead agency, went after its own grant to fund the Youth N’ Sports
Program. In this program, however, the Center established a partnership with the
City’s Parks and Recreation Department in order to reach parents and youth involved
in the City-sponsored recreational leagues. The Center staff worked with coaches to
deliver information to their soccer players about the myths and dangers of tobacco.
Two additional shifts occurred in the Delhi Center through its involvement in the
Youth N’ Sports program. First, this program stretched its so-called catchment area
57

57
A “catchment area” is a social service term used to delimit the boundaries of service in
terms of different social service providers.

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beyond the Delhi neighborhood because the project was a citywide intervention
focusing on a specific target subpopulation: coaches and youth involved in City-
sponsored sports leagues. The second shift had to do with the Center’s role vis-à-vis
government agencies. In this case, the City of Santa Ana played the “bridging role,”
allowing a nonprofit organization to enter the citywide sports leagues. The Center
was brought in because of its capacity to work with “Latinos”—that is, its
identification with an ethnic community was turned into a specific competency or
resource to help the City target its new and predominantly Mexican-origin
participants in its sports leagues.
The categorical approach—which targeted at-risk subpopulations through an
individual-level approach, focused the work of staff members on only one issue, and
now reached citywide—triggered some tensions internal to the Center and the Delhi
neighborhood. Martinez stated:
This wasn’t easy because neighborhood people would walk into the Center
and see people working there, but the staff couldn’t really help them. Or, staff
would provide services to people coming into the agency, and still have to do
their work on top of that. And sometimes they just couldn’t help, and can you
imagine…walking into the building needing assistance but staff not being
able to help you. Some people weren’t happy with this. It created confusion.

The second grant that Delhi Center received in 1992 stretched its catchment
area even further, beyond Santa Ana itself, and it also broadened the intervention
model. The California Department of Health Services gave Delhi Center a grant to
conduct a community health needs assessment of the Latino population in Orange
County. The contract revealed not only the State of California agencies’ increased

236
interest in reaching Mexican immigrants in Orange County but also the State’s desire
to restructure the social and professional networks at the local level. According to a
staff member in the Orange County’s Health Department, “This health needs study
was the first community-driven health needs assessment focused on Latinos in
Orange County in the early 1990s.” The project also created a space for interaction
among groups that were not usually interacting around these issues. The project
coordinator recalled: “I loved the fact that we were sitting across the table from
people in decision-making roles in the County, but I really didn’t know them. They
were here because they had to participate, because the State gave us money.”
The grant required the Center to work with multiple stakeholders, using the
Planned Approach to Community Health model (also known as PATCH). PATCH is
a multi-stakeholder planning process requiring that the Delhi Center bring together a
steering committee with representatives of the nonprofit sector, Latino residents,
county health agency staff, city staff, universities, and other stakeholders in
identifying key health issues, gaps, and needs. Through the assistance of this steering
group, the Delhi Center produced a report on the health status of Latinos and
organized a conference to disseminate the key findings. This was the first time the
Delhi Center had used a multi-stakeholder planning process to carry out a project.
By the end of 1992, the Center had adopted a traditional social service model,
one that targeted subpopulations within the Latino community, identified their needs,
and developed interventions to address those needs. Between 1993 and 1994, the use
of this model deepened as additional government contracts were won. In 1993, the

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Center received two State contracts to conduct HIV prevention activities with Latina
immigrant women and with Latino gay, transgender, and bisexual men. Similar to
the tobacco-use prevention program, these HIV education and prevention programs
involved conducting outreach activities throughout Orange County targeting those
subpopulations, and primarily involved passing out information and condom kits to
prevent HIV infection. In 1993, Orange County also contracted the Delhi Center to
provide HIV/AIDS client advocacy services and to form a partnership with other
organizations to provide a coordinated system of care for HIV-positive Latinos.
Irene Martinez explained:
Although the incidence of HIV was rising in the Latino population, few
Latinos were accessing services. We argued in our proposal that a
community-based organization was the best way to increase service access to
an ethnically and sexually marginalized population. It was not funded, but
then HRSA required the County to use this approach, and they realized we
had proposed a model.

As with the City of Santa Ana’s sports leagues, the Center’s new role was
based on its cultural competency in terms of working with Latinos. The Delhi Center
opened up a special site, Casa Delhi, and created a partnership with other
organizations to deliver health and human services to Latinos with HIV and AIDS in
a coordinated fashion and a culturally appropriate way. This included bringing in
organizations that provided mental health, case management, client advocacy, social
events, educational workshops, retreats, and other social support services. All
services were provided in Spanish.

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This project, however, entailed a higher level of formalization and the
development of a formal service-delivery system. The various organizations had to
sign memorandums of understanding; the units of service from across various
agencies and types of intervention had to be coordinated; and monthly and quarterly
reports were required. The program coordinator for the HIV programs remembered:
“It was a lot of work having to consolidate information, and to track information
across different units of service, and we really did not have the computer technology
to do this, so we had to calculate numbers by hand. And, we’re all competing for the
same funds, so not all service providers were willing to give us accurate numbers.”
Through this project, the Center developed the capacity to create formal systems of
health and human service delivery targeting “hard-to-reach” populations.
By the end of 1994, the Center’s organizational practices were significantly
different than they had been in 1991. Staff members now led the planning,
coordinating, and delivery of the interventions. Everyone, including the Executive
Director, worked on a full-time basis. Community members who previously
volunteered time to improve their neighborhood, became volunteers for specific
programs. They helped individuals within particular subpopulations targeted by a
particular program rather than doing work that might benefit the broader community.
Furthermore, the Center no longer served as a “host agency” for city and county
services. Instead of bringing services to the neighborhood, it now functioned as an
organization that assisted various Latino subpopulations gain access to health and
human services. Finally, by 1994, the Delhi Center was building formal health and

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human service delivery systems. The HIV program coordinator indicated that the key
issue for Delhi Center was:
Coordinating resources more efficiently, not necessarily expanding resources,
or restructuring them. It was not about challenging homophobia in our
community or changing educational policies such as the lack of sex education
in the schools. Our concerns were about implementing the strategies and
interventions that came from our funders, in this case the County and the
State [of California], and doing outcome-based evaluation, even though half
of the HIV organizations had no clue what that word meant.

THE STATE INSIDE THE ORGANIZATION: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
By 1994, government’s role had also shifted. And by 1999, at the end of
Delhi Center’s second phase, government’s role in relationship to the Center and
Latinos had taken on three characteristics. First, government was much more
involved with Latinos, as demonstrated by the Latino-focused grants that the Center
was winning. Secondly, the government’s involvement in the Center and the
neighborhood was no longer intermittent; instead, with the Center now managing
federal, state, and local contracts, government had become a constant and layered
presence. Thirdly, government was more local. For instance, Delhi Center’s HIV
programs—which were previously managed by the California Department of Health
Services—were now devolved to the local level, centralized in the Orange County
HIV/AIDS Planning Advisory Council established by Orange County’s Board of
Supervisors. The vast majority of Delhi Center’s funds were tied to HIV/AIDS

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prevention and intervention, so the shift toward local management made the presence
of local government agencies very pronounced. As one staff member noted: “Before,
with state contracts, we would get a call every three months or so. Now, we had to
attend meetings after meetings, weekly and daily calls for this and that.”
The focus on Latinos, the multiple government contracts, and the localization
of government meant that, in contrast to the state’s external presence during the
Delhi Center’s first phase, the state had become an internal presence for both the
organization and the community. More specifically, the government’s presence in
the organization’s internal workings went beyond mandating a social service model
that required a target population, a deficit-oriented framework, and interventions
promoting individual-level change. It also seeped into the Center’s internal decision-
making practices, particularly around staff hiring practices, the use of human
resources more generally, and social action strategies. The increased presence of the
state can be seen in two organizational crises, both occurring in terms of shifting
relationships to internal and external accountability.

STRUCTURING ROLES FOR INTERNAL ACCOUNTABILITY
The first major organizational crisis had to do with formalizing internal roles
in order to carry out government projects. Before 1991, during the organization’s
informal phase, roles had been quite fluid. Board members were largely
neighborhood residents and were also key volunteers in the programs. They
interacted closely with staff members, but they also had policy-making power. When

241
Irene Martinez was hired as Executive Director, she established new policies and
procedures to guide the interaction of the board, staff, and volunteers. As a result,
staff—volunteer or paid—worked directly with the Executive Director rather than
with the board members; and board members were not to be involved directly with
the staff but were to work through the Executive Director. This would ensure that
staff were receiving clear instructions and were accountable primarily to the
Executive Director.
This shift towards a more formal organizational culture also affected how the
Center structured its relationship with community residents and volunteers. Unlike
the first phase of the organization’s work, where volunteers were the primary
resource for community projects, in the second phase volunteers became more of a
liability than an asset. Volunteers, as people representing the organization, could also
jeopardize it. Activities like giving “clients”—that is, the recipients of services—a
ride home or to a health clinic exposed the Center to a potential lawsuit were
anything to happen to the client. So, a clear distinction needed to be drawn between
staff members, volunteers, and clients. Volunteers also had to be trained and
monitored, which occurred mostly within specific programs rather than training
people as “Delhi Center volunteers.” Staff members, moreover, could not have
personal interactions with clients outside of the professional relationship in the
organization. This was important in order to provide consistent services, to treat all
clients equally, and to minimize the Center’s liability.

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This strong break with the previous organizational structure and culture
caused a crisis. Several staff members, volunteers, and board members resigned from
the Center, and some neighborhood residents mobilized against Martinez. She
recalled, “During my first month of work, there were neighborhood residents
protesting outside the agency, with the media covering this.” Some neighborhood
residents defected and joined another organization at the local church.
58
For several
years after this, the two organizations did not communicate much, but that changed
when they formed a neighborhood coalition to advocate for the construction of the
community center (see chapter five).

STRUCTURING ROLES AND SYSTEMS FOR EXTERNAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
A second organizational crisis came about when systems had to be developed
for external accountability. In 1993, a staff member sent documents to state and
federal agencies and to the local newspapers, accusing the Executive Director of
fiscal improprieties.
59
This action immediately triggered several audits by State and
County agencies. Although no wrongdoing was found, it was now apparent that the
organization, as a recipient of government funding, was accountable to an external
entity, beyond just its board and the local community.

58
Some of these individuals became leaders in the local chapter of OCCCO.

59
The Azteca News and other newspapers covered this story.

243
In order to continue to obtain government contracts, the Delhi Center had no
choice but to formalize its fiscal and programmatic processes to address the
standards of external accountability. Systems had to be put in place to handle larger
sums of money and multiple contractual requirements. This included such things as
new subcontracting procedures, maintaining cash reserves to meet payroll
requirements, hiring and supervising of staff, staff training, and developing expertise
in grant report writing and grant accounting techniques.
60

RESTRUCTURING DELHI CENTER: 1995-1999
Although the Delhi Center had dealt with the organizational crises resulting
from the shifts in internal and external accountability, there were still more issues to
address. By 1995, after three years of receiving grants, it had reached its capacity to
deliver government services. County organizational audits revealed various gaps in
the accounting system, staff members were working overtime, and the agency lacked
a strategic plan. So, Orange County provided the Center with a technical assistance
grant. With those funds, the Center hired a consultant, the executive director of an
organization serving Latinos in Boston that had undergone similar changes.

60
Around this time, three other long-standing Latino nonprofit organizations in Orange
County collapsed due to growth issues. In addition to the Neighborhood Services Center and the
Clinica Nueva Esperanza closures, the Orange County Center for Health, a multi-million dollar
organization providing health services in neighboring Anaheim, also shut its doors when its staff were
accused of fiscal improprieties and not serving the needs of local residents. The Delhi Center in some
ways benefited from these closures, since it then received HIV/AIDS education funding because there
were now no other qualified Latino-based organizations in the area.

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During 1995, the County and the consultant provided assistance that was
focused on urgent matters of organizational survival relating to the infrastructure and
procedures required to implement and monitor programs, to manage staff, to keep
communication open, and to obtain more resources. The Center established a
stronger financial system by hiring an accountant with extensive experience
managing government contracts, rather than using a bookkeeping service. A team-
based management approach was developed to share the responsibility for managing
activities and growth. A team now interviewed and hired new staff members, and
continuing staff received formal, regular performance evaluations, also conducted by
a team. These changes largely addressed the requirements for meeting contractual
obligations of government contracts.
The Center also made a commitment to include its staff members in the
ongoing changes. Through monthly staff meetings and biannual retreats, staff had an
opportunity to discuss programmatic changes and offer their ideas for improvement.
These internal organizational shifts helped stabilize the organization’s crises. Staff
turnover decreased. There were no more external organizational audits. At the end of
this technical assistance process, the Executive Director and board members agreed
to continue growing as an organization and to continue seeking government grants,
but now it was decided to also pursue foundation grants in order to diversify the
funding stream.
By the end of 1995, the Delhi Center had acquired the programmatic and
fiscal capacity to plan and implement programs for the community. In part, this

245
newly minted capacity enabled the Center to enter into a contract with the City of
Santa Ana to provide a set of multiple health and social services to be housed in a
26,000 square foot facility to be constructed in the Delhi Park that would serve over
10,000 people per month (see chapter 5).
However, all this was not enough to satisfy the organization’s desire to
address the structural conditions that Mexican immigrants faced on a daily basis.
Thus, between 1996 and 1999, the Center staff undertook a series of strategic
planning processes, beginning with a statement of its new mission, vision, and
values. Based on that new mission statement, the Center would be able to identify
key arenas of work that would help reposition the organization in a way that would
address structural hardship.

EMPOWERMENT STRATEGIES INSIDE THE SOCIAL SERVICE MODEL
The Delhi Center’s staff members gradually began to identify limits to the
state-sponsored programs. As one staff member recalled, “At first we were star
struck [by] getting these grants, and we tried to speak their language; but we just
needed to be honest with what we were seeing with what worked and what didn’t
work.” Staff members began to realize that government grants were based on
approaches that did not work well with low-income, Mexican immigrants: “The
problem was that the interventions required by state agencies were not really
appropriate, or didn’t really work with this population.” These programs focused on
individual at-risk behavior rather than the broader social and power inequities that

246
individuals faced. For example, with regards to the Entre Nosotras program, the HIV
prevention program targeting Latina immigrant women, staff realized that it was
insufficient to pass out condoms to women, and that this could, in fact, trigger
violence in the relationship. The staff member responsible for this program shared a
particularly poignant experience:
One of our participants had a confrontation with her husband because when
he saw the condoms, he thought that his wife was accusing him of having sex
with other men. When she told him that [distributing condoms to other
women] was part of the program, he got mad and kept yelling at her, ‘How
dare she accuse him of cheating on her? She had to leave the house, he
pursued her, and we helped her place a restraining order on him.

Addressing Latino men with HIV/AIDS posed a different challenge to the
state’s social service model. As one staff member noted: “The problem was they
were focusing on Ryan White, not Ryan of Color. When people of color got infected,
unlike middle-class White gay men, their needs were about poverty; and with
Mexican immigrants, it was poverty plus papers—many don’t have green cards.” In
the case of Mexican immigrants, their ineligibility for the basic public services that
others qualified for was a key issue.
Staff members began to change the strategies of the prevention and
intervention programs by, for example, including other topics in the curriculum, such
as issues of power and control in the relationship, self-esteem, domestic violence, as
well as other health issues, such as breast and cervical cancer. However, this shift
caused problems because it challenged categorical funding restrictions, as expressed
by one of the HIV prevention staff working with Latino immigrant women:

247
We got flack for this from the State, and later from the County when they
started to manage these contracts. They didn’t understand how domestic
violence was related to HIV infection with Latina women. They also argued
that domestic violence and cervical and breast cancer were part of a different
funding category. These should be paid through other sources. And they
wanted us to pay them back the money we had used for these other topics.
But, when you are working with Latina immigrant women who do not know
their own body parts or are ashamed to even use the words for their body
parts, just giving condoms to them and expect they will not get infected is a
crime.

Staff members began to organize a new program intervention that was not
just about passing out information, but about developing skills and fostering
resources among program participants. Through this new approach, participants
began to actively organize the efforts to make changes in themselves and within their
circle of close friends and relatives. This program now identified Latina immigrant
women from specific neighborhoods to be trained and mobilized as health educators
for their community. People who were at risk for HIV were trained to become para-
professionals to reach out to extremely or highly marginalized populations. Locally
known as the “promotora” model, this prevention approach addresses issues beyond
a strictly individual-level focus. Using participatory methods, Delhi Center staff used
the promotora model as a key way to carry out an empowerment approach.
We borrowed heavily from Tecnicas participativas para la educacion
popular, a book we got from someone in Mexico who used these techniques.
We began to organize two-day training modules. This was accompanied by
regular meetings with those [who had] completed the training modules. But,
there was no going back. We felt strongly that women had to be responsible
for their own change.

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Figure 6.1: An Intimate Lesson on AIDS

Source: Los Angeles Times

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The immigrant women who were most actively involved in the program
decided to organize the first conference for Latino immigrant women in Orange
County, called Mujeres en busca de un futuro major.

Figure 6.2: Mujeres en Busca de un Mejor Futuro

Source: Excelsior, February 14, 1997

250
They planned the conference and through their recruitment efforts, they
attracted more than three hundred participants. The conference informed Latina
immigrant women about their health options and various educational, economic, and
legal resources. This conference did not fit into the HIV prevention contract’s
definition of outreach efforts. As one Delhi Center staff member noted, “The
participants wanted to do this themselves, so they organized the theme and also put
on the conference topics themselves, but the County did not accept it as part of HIV
prevention.”

NO WAY OUT: CATEGORICAL FUNDING AND LIMITS TO THE SOCIAL
SERVICE MODEL
Although the Delhi Center staff developed empowerment strategies within
the social service model, the organization faced other more serious restrictions
stemming from the nature of categorical funding. Accepting government grants
required following state-endorsed strategies, and this affected the Delhi Center’s
hiring practices by forcing it to hire people with professional degrees and particular
skill sets, including the ability to write reports in English to document program
outcomes. As one staff member pointed out:
The worst part was being pressured to hire staff that fit their mold. They had
to speak in English and Spanish, had to have the capacity to do what others
did in English, but still relate to the immigrant community. …We knew that
the best folks who could do this work were community members themselves
who spoke only Spanish. This stuff was not rocket science, even though it is
painted like that. Remember, this was at a time in the mid-to-late 1990s when
all of a sudden everyone had to evaluate their programs, to show outcomes

251
using goals, objectives, indicators, pre-post tests, and other things that
required specialized training.

The Center either had to hire people with professional degrees or invest
heavily in the professional development of existing staff members, so that they
would be prepared to plan, implement, and evaluate the services offered under
government contracts. Yet there was little time to invest in the formal training.
Accepting government grants also meant that Center staff spent a greater proportion
of their time engaging government agencies. There were many “hidden costs” that
the staff had to shoulder: new grant proposals had to be written, existing grants had
to be renewed, there were planning committee meetings to attend, detailed work
plans had to be developed and revised, data collection systems had to be created,
procedures for handling finances and for the training and monitoring of staff had to
be implemented, and formal client and staff roles had to be established. Moreover,
each new contract meant attending planning and advocacy sessions for each of the
program funding areas. Because each category of program had its own language,
objectives, and circle of policy makers, the staff spent significant amounts of time
cultivating networks.
Spending more time in administrative activities became a vicious cycle. The
program coordinator described this condition:
We were writing grants a particular way to get funded, but we knew that
these strategies didn’t entirely work well. So, then we got stuck with the
responsibility of evaluating something that didn’t work. More time, more
energy….The pace of work was tremendous. We were running at a hundred
miles an hour, working on all sides. If there was little time to invest in formal

252
training, there was even less time to set up an organizational structure to deal
with the multiple issues were dealing with simultaneously.

Moreover, the issue- and program-specific activities or services that
government grants and contracts target provided little or no resources for general
support services requested by Center clients, such as food, referrals, translations, and
emergency financial assistance. As the Center increasingly ran government
programs, its clientele also grew, but that only exacerbated the need for support
services, which were not funded through categorical funding in grants and contracts.
“It was difficult,” stated the front desk staff member. “Try explaining to the person
who needs a place to stay that night that your services do not include referrals.”
But perhaps the worst aspect of the categorical funding tied to the social
service model for the agency had to do with a system of financial dependency. First,
the organization depended almost entirely on these government grants. Close to 90
percent of its funds came from government sources. Secondly, these government
contracts produced a chronic cash flow problem. Because government agencies paid
Delhi Center in arrears, sometimes three months after submitting an invoice, the
organization had to have enough money in the bank to float salaries and expenses for
three months. This meant that the organization leaders felt an even greater obligation
toward maintaining good relations with the funders. The Executive Director
described why this was the case:
It’s not so much that we wanted to please the government agencies, but that
their money paid for salaries, utilities, and other basic things in the agency.
But this only made it worse: we had to follow what they said we needed to

253
do, and it was hard to bite the hand that fed us. In the end, they had the
power to come into our agency, audit us, and hold our check until everything
conformed to their liking.

More government funding would not solve the problem of dependency.
Indeed, more government funds meant additional administrative costs: accounting
expenses, upgrading the center’s information system to adequately track services to
justify program expenditures, and investing in staff development for cross-agency
coordination. Although the organization’s internal processes were in place to manage
contracts, the receipt of those contracts steered the center away from its mission of
working closely with Mexican immigrants.

TRANSFORMING DELHI CENTER: A HYBRID FORM OF
EMPOWERMENT
The Center faced a critical question: if it were to continue, what direction
should it take? What did its mission, vision, core values, and strategic goals consist
of? These are important areas that any nonprofit must define, for it charts the
organization’s course and provides the framework within which to make decisions,
ranging from everyday practices to formal policies. This is the moment when an
organization creates a discourse that lays out its key purpose, creates core strategies,
and develops detailed action plans to achieve the organization’s mission.

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DELHI CENTER’S EMPOWERMENT MODE: 1996-1999
In 1996, with the assistance of Chapman University’s Center for Nonprofit
Leadership, the Delhi Center’s board members, staff, and clients participated in
crafting a statement of the organization’s vision, mission, and core values. There
were two key issues. First, should the organization continue focusing on Latinos or
should it broaden the population it served? After much internal debate, the Delhi
Center chose to continue focusing on Latinos because it recognized that race and
ethnicity were important in terms of understanding the realities that Mexican
American and Mexican immigrants face. The Center’s approach to race and ethnicity
differed from the way in which state agencies approached the categories of “Latino”
or “ethnicity.” Whereas the government used those labels to target a subpopulation in
terms of individual behaviors, the Delhi Center’s notion of ethnicity included the
concept of social group oppression: labor market, housing, and other forms of
discrimination are faced not by individuals but by many Mexican immigrants, who
experience these things as a social group.
The second question was whether the Center should continue to be a service
provider or should focus its efforts on community organizing, taking up work similar
to that done by grassroots organizing. These discussions led to the creation of a
hybrid empowerment model that integrated social service delivery and leadership
development. The decision was made to provide needed health and human services
and develop individuals and groups to be become engaged and active in promoting
social change. This service-leadership approach is evident in the Delhi Center’s

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organizational new vision statement: to be a “model leadership development and
service center that builds on the unique characteristics of our diverse Latino
community in Orange County.” To achieve this organizational vision, the Center
created a new mission: “To develop the leadership capacities of Latinos and
strengthen the social support network of individuals, families, and communities
through training, service, and opportunities for self-help.”
The Delhi Center’s mission statement redefined how it worked with its
clientele. The Center would no longer view these people as mere “clients” with
urgent needs but would now see them as potential leaders. The Center recognized the
capacity of these individuals to become social change agents. Receiving services was
only the first step in a broader transformation process that would lead to a person
becoming an agent of change. The Delhi Center articulated four core values to guide
its relationship to community members and clients:
1. Self-help for individuals, families, neighborhoods, communities and other
circles of influence.
2. The transformation of participants into volunteers, and volunteers into
leaders who may function as community leaders and advocates.
3. Focusing on root causes of problems, and therefore on the expansion of
knowledge and collaboration necessary to resolve them.
4. Creating of agents of change for service to the greater community.
Through this strategic planning process, the Center articulated explicitly its theory of
empowerment. There are several key elements. Empowerment is seen as a process

256
that begins with helping people help themselves, then moves to transforming
participants into volunteers who give back to their community, and then having
volunteers become leaders—who can help advocate on behalf of others. This seems
very similar to the City of Santa Ana’s own politically conservative empowerment
approach. A key difference is that Delhi Center’s approach does not stop with the
individual, but moves on to forging collaboration and coalitions to address root
problems. The Executive Director stressed this difference:
We did not just want to address symptoms of deeper problems simply by
helping one individual change his behavior or her attitude. This is what the
contracts wanted us to do. But we knew we needed to go to the root of the
problem by helping people get good jobs, a dignified place to live, and a
healthy relationship with others in their family and neighborhood.

In other words, unlike the social service model, Delhi Center saw the “root”
of problems in broader social structures—it is found in the underlying conditions of
marginalization. The Center also recognized that, in order to address these
underlying conditions, it would be necessary to engage a broader system of
resources, people, agencies, and institutions than just the ones in which the
organization was already enmeshed.
The shift in vision, mission, and core values meant that the Center had to
change its role from just providing services to a broader role of building the capacity
of individuals, families, and communities in order to generate personal, group, and
social transformation. This meant that the Center had to address the issues and areas
that were important to the diverse Latino and Mexican immigrant communities it

257
served. In 1998 and 1999, the Center organized another planning process focused on
its strategic goals. Rather than use categories and issues created by government
agencies, community residents themselves would identify their issues and propose
the categories of intervention. This planning process was not just about increasing
client and staff participation in designing and implementing a program defined by
government. It was about providing clients and community leaders an opportunity to
develop the key categories through which to focus the organization’s resources and
direction.
The Delhi Center used an action research process called Future Search to
bring together a diverse cross-section of the Latino community locally and
countywide. Through this participatory planning process, the Center intentionally
engaged a very diverse set of neighborhood residents, staff members, community
leaders, and program clients. It included young people, recent and long-term
residents, and seniors who had been in the area for several generations as well as
people who lived in other parts of Orange County. This planning process is also
rooted in dialogue rather than technical expertise, allowing people to tell their
personal stories of success and struggle and to highlight shared experiences. The
members of the group also explain why they think they have had these shared
experiences. Through the planning process, the group named racism, homophobia,
patriarchy, and social hierarchies as driving forces of the daily problems faced by
Latinos in Orange County. Addressing these social hierarchies and forms of

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oppression had never been a part of any of the Delhi Center’s proposals to
government agencies.
The community participants helped the Center leadership identify four issue
areas that were critical for comprehensive community development: health;
education; economic development; and culture, the arts, and recreation. The
community participants, moreover, conceptualized these four areas in an interlocking
way: someone has a low-wage job without health benefits will probably not have
access to adequate health services; and, someone with low education will probably
find only jobs that pay little and without health benefits; and if a Mexican
immigrants, especially their children, believe all the negative public discourse about
them, they would probably not want to do well in school. Thus, positive cultural
affirmation is tied to education, to employment and health. This interlocking view of
these issues challenged categorical funding streams, which tend to address one issue
in isolation from others.
Although social structure rather than individual behaviors were identified as
the underlying “root” issue, the Center left the “addressing of root issues” to a
participatory process. The Delhi Center did not formally adopt an explicit political
ideology to explain and address social inequality. Instead, in their analysis of their
own conditions, participants would name these issues and develop strategies and
interventions for each area. This organizational decision was made so as not to
impose on ideology on community members, who were viewed as having the
capacity to conduct their own analysis of their personal and social conditions, and to

259
develop their own change strategies. The Delhi Center’s philosophy worked well in
the context of the Delhi neighborhood coalition that lobbied for the construction of
the new community center and expanded park. However, as seen chapter five,
without a clear political ideology, the Delhi Center entered into public-private
partnerships with the City promoting a politically conservative set of policies,
including the increased abdication of the local state’s re-distributive responsibilities.

DELHI CENTER’S LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK: 1999-
2003
By 2003, the Delhi Center’s ongoing negotiations with state agencies
engendered a formal and informal mode of empowerment. The organization’s
leadership development framework combined a social service and empowerment
approach. This framework is put to use as the empowerment mode.
An analysis of Delhi Center’s empowerment practice reveals that it is
structured along a continuum, similar to a ladder that is cobbled together from many
different grants and contracts. This laddering approach allows the organization to
keep its vision as centered as possible on a social justice model—by creating agents
of change—and to circumvent the obstacles that the government contracts would
normally cause for empowerment work. At times, this ladder falls apart or breaks
based on changes in funding, programs, and staff.

260
First Level: Service Recipient. A person enters the Center with a specific
need for basic services, such as job or other referrals or document translations. This
person is viewed as a “client” or “consumer” of these services. The person is unable
to participate actively in programs designed to help address the underlying
conditions driving these needs. Within the specifications of government contracts,
the Center provides the immediate services to respond to this person’s need.
Second Level: Program Participant. The person has a need but is able to
participate in a program requiring time and resources on his or her part. The
organization provides training requiring attendance at a specific set of classes or
meetings. Examples include child care training, small business training and
networking, peer support groups, among other activities.
Third Level: Program Volunteer. The person is able to give of her or his time
to support the development and implementation of the program. There are three
levels of engagement: (a) a volunteer who supports the program through low-
intensity work, such as setting up a room before a support group begins, conducting
outreach for a program, or providing childcare—with or without a stipend; (b) a
volunteer whose work is integral to the delivery of the program intervention, such as
“promotoras” or “peer advocates,” who hold one-on-one sessions or classes with
peers in their community; and (c) program leaders, who are involved in the planning,
design, and implementation of the program itself—for example, planning and
implementing a retreat, a workshop, or conferences.

261
Fourth Level: Agency Leadership. At this level, the volunteer begins to
participate in other activities, such as advisory committees, sitting on the board, or
representing the Center at specific functions.
Fifth Level: Community Leadership. At this level, the person is a community
leader or has a formal leadership role in other grassroots organizations, such as a
neighborhood association.

Table 6.2: Delhi Center Empowerment Model
Community
Leader

The person assumes a formal leadership role in the
community (e.g., an officer in the neighborhood
association or soccer league, etc.). The person may also
be involved in civic and electoral mobilization.
Agency
Leader

Volunteer begins to participate in agency-wide committees,
such as sitting on the Board or representing the Center in
external functions.

Program leaders, who are involved in the planning, design, and
implementation of the program itself—e.g., planning &
implementing a retreat, a workshop, and/or conferences.

A volunteer whose work is integral to the delivery of the program,
such as “promotoras” or “peer advocates” or “peer support.”

A volunteer that supports the program through low-intensity work, such
as setting up a room before a support group begins, conducting outreach
for a program, & providing childcare—stipended or un-stipended.
Program Volunteer

Person is able to give of her/his time to support the development and
implementation of the program. There are three levels of engagement:
Program
Participant

Person has need but is able to participate in a program requiring more time and
resources on his or her part. Agency provides trainings requiring attendance to a
specific set of classes or convenings. Examples include child care training, small
business trainings and networking, peer support groups, among other activities.

Service
Recipient

Person enters agency with specific need, and is unable to participate actively in program.
Agency provides service to respond to person’s need and specifications of government
contracts. Person is conceptualized as a “client” or “consumer” of services. Basic
services include: service referrals, document translations, job referrals, and others.

262
CONCLUSION: THE POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT
The Delhi Center’s organizational transformation revealed a dynamic,
relational engagement with the local state. Its empowerment approach emerged
through this process, and its empowerment practices are similar to, yet also different
from, those of Santa Ana’s urban regime. Similarities include the promotion of
resident and client participation. Like the City of Santa Ana’s community capacity-
building approach that emerged during the mid to late 1990s, the Delhi Center’s
form of empowerment was committed to having clients and staff involved in
designing programs, and there was an emphasis on training and support for client
leadership development and volunteer development. Like the City’s approach, there
was also a commitment to building the capacity of the organization. The Delhi
Center had to constantly re-think its organizational practices to be able to work with
residents and clients and to train staff members and let them participate more
actively in setting the organization’s goals.
However, there are a number of differences as well. The first is that the
Center's leadership development helps support the creation of "agents of change,"
individuals who are trained to be able to address the root causes of the problems that
Latinos face in Orange County. At that time, government agencies promoted
individual behavioral change but did not go much further. This empowerment model
conceptualizes stages of development: if individuals build skills, they will become
self-reliant and self-sufficient. However, this model does not lead these individuals
to question underlying conditions. By contrast, the Delhi Center’s form of

263
empowerment involves naming the broader socio-structural forces that affect
individuals. The Center’s form of empowerment stresses engaging and changing
social structures and policies rather than simply finding a job to pay the rent.
Secondly, the Delhi Center’s form of empowerment deals holistically with
everyday issues, including health, education, arts and culture, and economic
development. It places neighborhood residents as experts in terms of their own
conditions. This type of empowerment goes beyond the categorical funding regime
established by government agencies. Empowerment for the Delhi Center also
involves supporting the staff members’ own development and creating structures
within the organization for greater staff participation in the organizational decision-
making, from horizontal decision-making process, to internal planning retreats twice
a year, to cross-functional training.
This analysis of Delhi Center’s empowerment approach reveals that the
organization has attempted to create a hybrid empowerment framework that
combines both the developmental and social justice form of empowerment. This
hybrid approach—which explicitly defined the Center’s mission as including
education, health, economic development, and the arts, culture, and recreation—
enabled the nonprofit organization to obtain funds from local government to provide
essential resources to address economic survival issues for Mexican immigrant
clients. At the same time, the Center was able to work to develop community-
leadership skills.

264
The hybrid model also ostensibly sought to produce agents of change who
would be able to address the root causes of the hardships that Mexican immigrants
face. However, the model only questioned social inequality “rhetorically,” without
actually questioning it in practice. For example, the Center never went beyond using
the term “root causes”— a general concept that embodies a reality that everyone
agrees exists. What those root causes actually are, however, was never openly stated.
Such things as low-wage work structures, the lack of health benefits, and workplace
discrimination were not identified as the causes of urban hardship. By not being
specific about the precise sources of hardship, the Center diluted its potentially
critical empowerment model. In turn, this allowed the actors in City government to
see a partner in the Delhi Center. The Center’s failure to name structural inequalities
and unequal power relations left room for the political elites and local state managers
to incorporate the hybrid community empowerment model into its public-private
partnerships.
Thus, despite using a rhetoric of empowerment, the grassroots organizations
and nonprofit agencies involved in this type of collaboration with state agencies end
up implicitly or explicitly supporting an empowerment process that lends support to
minimal state involvement, accepts market-based solutions to urban problems, and
devolves the responsibility to the individual for his or her own condition.
The findings from this analysis suggest that the developmental and social
justice models of empowerment are not entirely opposed to each other. Both
empowerment models presuppose that empowerment occurs in civil society and

265
eventually targets the state, which stands outside of civil society. This chapter,
however, shows that one way that the state affects civil society is by structuring both
how, and to what extent, a social justice form of empowerment can develop within a
nonprofit organization itself. The case of the Delhi Center reveals that interactions
with state actors or state agencies strongly shape that empowerment, long before it
can it can manifest in public processes. Thus, although the Delhi neighborhood
movement, which fought for the establishment of its community center, was based
on a critical form of citizenship, in the end, the community center was built through a
process of negotiation and interaction with the state, and was managed by the Delhi
Center, under an hybrid empowerment model rather than a social justice one. Even
before the urban regime incorporated the Center into its economic empowerment
agenda, the Center had already incorporated the local state’s developmental form of
empowerment into its inner workings.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion:

The Local Enterprising Citizenship Regime and Latino Immigrant Political Subjects

How do the neoliberal transformations of the local state and the
denationalization of citizenship impact the empowerment of Mexican immigrants?
Do these changes to the local state and citizenship produce Mexican immigrant
political subjects that promote or challenge neoliberal policies? My analysis of Santa
Ana’s empowerment-oriented public-private partnerships reveals that urban regime
leaders use those partnerships to invest in the creation of a certain type of citizen, the
“enterprising citizen.” This ideal citizen is a subject who is economically self-
sufficient (uses the labor market for income) and socially self-reliant (does not rely
on government for social or economic support, but instead turns to family, neighbors,
and the voluntary sector). The urban regime leaders also use the discourse around the
enterprising citizen to encourage political subjects to support a neoliberal political
ideology, which at the local level follows three tenets: (a) social rights must be
earned locally through a web of social relations and obligations (neighborhood
associations and nonprofit organizations), not granted as entitlements by the nation
state; (b) the private and voluntary sectors, not government, are responsible for
addressing hardship; and (c) local government’s role is to promote business
development and competitiveness, not to participate in redistributive policies.

267
Urban regime members also use the empowerment-oriented public-private
partnerships to shape citizenship by supporting some forms of social action over
others. On the one hand, these partnerships encourage grassroots organizations and
immigrant residents to engage in collective action that decreases dependency on
government and increases the use of market-oriented strategies. On the other hand,
public-private partnerships inhibit the emergence of demands for resources and
public policies that would seek to address the underlying sources of urban hardship
(in the case of Santa Ana, the low-wage structures and high housing and living
costs). By providing technical assistance and financial as well as symbolic incentives
to follow a particular form of community empowerment that focuses on increased
individual responsibility and greater voluntary sector involvement in addressing
hardships, these partnerships create an environment in which making demands on the
government is seen as unwarranted and undesirable. The partnerships do not actively
repress such demands, but instead, people are lead to believe that solving problems
on their own is a more appropriate approach.
Finally, this community empowerment process produces a political subject
that does not use the electoral arena to make demands for resources from the local
government, but rather turns to the individual and civil society to resolve social and
economic problems. In other words, social action is contained within the state/civil
society networks that are part of the public-private partnerships, and it does not enter
into the formal political-electoral field, which normally would be the site for

268
formulating public policies to force local government into a more redistributive role
vis-à-vis urban hardship.
My analysis of the empowerment process in Santa Ana’s public-private
partnerships also suggests that the urban regime’s investments in community
empowerment can sometimes have unintended effects. For instance, the investment
in organizational and community capacity building can help individuals and
organizations resist the urban regime’s politically conservative ideology. This
grassroots resistance, however, rarely expresses itself in traditionally progressive
ways (for example, through livable wage campaigns, rent controls, economic
boycotts, and community benefits agreements, to name a few). Resistance strategies
might not even be based on using the political-electoral field to reshape the local
state but instead be more focused on micro-level processes in grassroots
organizations and nonprofit agencies, such as leadership development, technical
assistance, community mobilization, and other practices addressing issues relating to
daily life. They can increase the capacity of an organization or community to address
complex social and economic problems, and even help immigrants assert social
rights and make demands on local government. However, those who use these
practices are highly susceptible to ongoing co-optation into the politically
conservative projects of urban regime leaders, particularly because the practices are
not always conducted within a critical framework that would identify social
inequality or unequal power relations between different groups in a city. To the
contrary, these practices occur in an environment constructed around the neoliberal

269
discourse which defines the direct forms of demand making as unwarranted or
ineffective.
In Santa Ana, it appears that empowerment processes associated with new
forms of local governance produced a type of immigrant political subject that
ultimately supported a neoliberal project. Although certain types of urban hardship
can be ameliorated by the sort of individual and household strategies that are
encouraged by neoliberalism, that ideology generally does not support the collective
challenging of low-wage work structures, high housing costs, or the state’s
withdrawal of a social safety net. On the other hand, while denationalized local
citizenship may enable immigrants to claim membership to a local community (such
as the Delhi neighborhood) and to mobilize civic networks to press local government
for resources to address hardships, immigrant-led empowerment processes are highly
susceptible to political exclusion or co-optation. Co-optation is particularly
pronounced in the neoliberal empowerment process, because those taking part in it
lack a critical perspective that names unequal power relations, and they thus fail to
unmask the complicity between the local state and business interests, manifested in
pro-business policies. These empowerment processes ultimately fail to help
immigrants engage the political networks that shape local policies.
This study contributes to the urban governance and immigrant political
agency literatures in two ways. First, it re-conceptualizes the urban regime’s public-
private partnerships as part of a broader local enterprising citizenship regime. This
local enterprising citizenship regime promotes a model that requires self-reliance and

270
self-sufficiency in the citizen; but this model of citizenship—as Anne Schneider and
Helen Ingram (1995, 2005) point out—is tied to a set of public policies. Thus, the
concept of enterprising citizenship anchors a set of enduring public policies and
formal and informal networks of civic, political, and economic actors. Urban regime
leaders use this concept of the enterprising citizen to legitimize the neoliberal
restructuring of the local state. Urban regime leaders use private-public partnerships
to incorporate immigrant populations into a city (i.e., belonging and identity) and to
mediate how immigrants gain access to local state (i.e., social rights).
This study’s second contribution is its identification of a specific relationship
between transformations to citizenship and the restructuring of the nation-state.
While welfare citizenship was associated with redistributive politics articulated at the
nation-state level (the federal government’s responsibility to provide social support),
enterprising citizenship corresponds with neoliberal politics increasingly articulated
at the local level (the local government’s responsibility to provide social support).
The provision of social support at the local level, however, occurs through a different
model of the state. Instead of a “steering state” (the tax-and-spend model that
provides resources directly to unemployed or marginalized populations), enterprising
citizenship is tied to a local, society-centered, workfare state (one that coordinates
services among different private and nonprofit organizations promoting self-reliance
and self-sufficiency among individuals).
This study on Mexican immigrant empowerment in public-private
partnerships in inner cities and cities at the bottom of urban hierarchies raises a

271
number of issues regarding the relationship between the local state, denationalized
citizenship, and political subjectivity. The first issue has to do with the nature of
racial, class, and gender politics in relation to the Welfare State and the Workfare
State. This study assumes that the transition from the Welfare State to the Workfare
State has resulted in a weakened social safety net for marginalized populations (in
part, by the relentless attack on social rights). However, this does not mean that the
Welfare State was entirely a progressive instrument for racial minorities and women.
George Lipsitz (1998) argues that the Welfare State that developed from 1945 to
1975 was part of the development of Whiteness as a system of cultural, political, and
economic privileges, corresponding with the rapid expansion of the suburban areas
and the intensification of class and racial segregation in the inner cities. In other
words, the welfare citizen that advocated for the Welfare State would have to be re-
examined (see also Gray’s [1995] analysis of the “Welfare Queen”).
If the enterprising citizenship leads to less local state involvement in
providing a safety net, Lipsitz’ work suggests that immigrant political subjects that
want to challenge an enterprising citizenship would also have to develop a
citizenship that goes beyond defending the Welfare State. What citizenship model
would immigrant political subjects assert as an alternative to enterprising citizenship
and welfare citizenship? Indeed, as Sassen (2006) argues, this model of citizenship
would have to go beyond Soysal (1994) post-national citizenship, because the
nation-state still determines the set of civil, political, and social rights bestowed to
immigrants. If the most viable model of citizenship for immigrants is to be found in

272
a denationalized, local citizenship, as Sassen (2006) suggests, it would be important
to break through dominant constellation of U.S. political discourses tied to liberal
individualism, neoconservative, neoliberal, and neocommunitarian ideologies. This
dissertation, however, shows that this is not an easy endeavor.
The second issue raised by this study is connected to the construction of a
Latino political subject and citizenship. During the Chicano movements of the 1960s
and early 1970s, activists advanced a political ideology of self-determination,
cultural nationalism, and decolonization. These ideologies were riddled with
patriarchal notions. Other activists asserted a radical leftist politics (Pulido 2006).
Then, the 1980s gave rise to the “Hispanic” generation, who supported a
neoconservative and neoliberal political agenda. More recently, David Hayes-
Bautista (2004) and other scholars have argued that a new Latino political subject
can emerge by focusing on the values of the Latino community, especially its assets,
by looking within to identify strengths. The problem with Hayes-Bautista’s position,
which is similar to self-reliance and self-sufficiency discourse, is that he avoids a
political ideology that would otherwise help identify and critique unequal power
relations. Moreover, the nationalist framework in which the self-determination,
cultural nationalism, and decolonization ideologies were formed may not necessarily
appeal to immigrant activists with binational identities (Smith and Guarnizo 1998).
Recently, Michael Peter Smith (2003) has noted that Mexican immigrant
activists, and Mexican immigrants in general, have been cast as “entrepreneurial
actors.” In other words, does this mean that Mexican immigrant bi-national activists

273
buy into an enterprising citizenship? If so, does this make them more susceptible to
an urban regime’s enterprising-citizenship discourse with its emphasis on self-
reliance and self-sufficiency? From a different perspective, to what extent is the
concept of enterprising citizenship used not just at the local level in the United States
but also in Mexico? In other words, is the enterprising citizen a dominant or
hegemonic transnational model that applies to nation-states that have undergone a
neoliberal transformation (as is the case with Mexico)?
A third issue that requires further research has to do with grassroots
organizations’ role regarding the development of a Latino immigrant political
subject. The literature on the the proliferation of nonprofit organizations—what some
call the “NGOization” of civil society (see Amutabi 2006)—has questioned the role
of nongovernmental organizations in community empowerment. For instance, these
scholars note that nonprofits are expected to work with low-income populations
through market models, rather than by mobilizing to pressure government for
increased funding for nonprofit agencies. This has led to the development of the
model of “social entrepreneurs,” which refers to nonprofit organizations that develop
businesses (or become business-like) in order to sustain their own work. These
organizations are expected to take part in program evaluations to demonstrate their
efficiency, effectiveness, and the successful outcomes of their programs, benchmarks
in market-based models. To what extent does the market model, by decreasing
dependency on government programs, actually provide more autonomy to social

274
entrepreneurial organizations to develop political subjects that are critical of social
inequality?
Responding to these questions would require a different set of methodologies
than the ones employed in this study. A comparative and transnational approach
would certainly have to be included. For instance, it would be important to examine
other cities with a substantial number of immigrants to gauge the extent to which
leaders in other urban regimes have developed a local enterprising citizenship regime
through the use of public-private partnerships as has occurred in Santa Ana. My own
work in Los Angeles County suggests that public-private partnerships to deal with
the presence of large immigrant populations are not being formed only in Santa Ana.
For example, the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council is a nonprofit
organization that is structured as a public-private partnership. This organization
serves the entire County through nine service-planning areas. Using a community
capacity-building approach, the council for each service-planning area must establish
a partnership with voluntary associations, grassroots organizations, businesses, and
an array of public agencies. (The City of Los Angeles also has promoted the creation
of neighborhood councils.) These councils are also promoting empowerment through
the deployment of a discourse of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, but unlike Santa
Ana’s neighborhood associations, these have formal planning powers to approve or
not approve local development.
In addition to mapping out the pervasiveness of the empowerment discourse
in public-private partnerships as it relates to immigrants, future work would require a

275
deeper and more intense engagement with the political actors themselves to
understand how they grapple with the various political ideologies. I would need to
spend more time understanding the political trajectory of these individuals, how they
developed their political ideology, and how they apply this ideology within specific
contexts. This dissertation attempted to demonstrate that urban regimes are actively
using empowerment-oriented public-private partnerships to produce political
subjects that support a neoliberal ideology and a local state that actively favors
business interests. Closer attention to how political actors themselves negotiate these
ideological landscapes across places and nations may generate more insights into the
construction of political subjects, citizenship, and the state.

276
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Asset Metadata

Creator Rodríguez, Rigoberto (author)

Core Title Enterprising citizenship: Mexican immigrant empowerment and public-private partnerships in Santa Ana, California

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Geography

Publication Date 08/17/2007

Defense Date 08/10/2006

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Mexican immigrant empowerment,OAI-PMH Harvest,Santa Ana California

Place Name California (states), Santa Ana (city or populated place), USA (countries)

Language English

Advisor Pulido, Laura (committee chair), Hise, Greg (committee member), Wolch, Jennifer (committee member), Wong, Janelle S. (committee member)

Creator Email rigoberto@sbcglobal.net

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m793

Unique identifier UC1148245

Identifier etd-Rodriguez-20070817 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-546684 (legacy record id),usctheses-m793 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Rodriguez-20070817.pdf

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Document Type Dissertation

Rights Rodríguez, Rigoberto

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu