Organizations and Immigrant Worker Advocacy In the U.S.: Findings from a Structured Narrative Review

Background and Purpose: Latine immigrant workers in the United States face compounding structural vulnerabilities rooted in restrictive immigration policies, labor precarity, and exclusion from traditional labor protections, especially those who lack legal status. These challenges are particularly acute in the U.S. South and Southeast, where rapid demographic change has intersected with legacies of racial and legislative exclusion. Yet, existing scholarship focuses disproportionately on traditional immigrant destinations, with limited attention to how organizations in the Southeast navigate advocacy with and on behalf of Latine immigrant workers. This structured narrative review synthesizes the literature on immigrant advocacy, organization-led initiatives, and the promotion of immigrant worker well-being to establish the empirical and conceptual foundation for a qualitative multiple case study of Latine immigrant-serving organizations in the U.S. Southeast.

Methods: A structured narrative review approach was employed, consistent with interpretivist research traditions. Four academic databases were searched: Scopus, Academic Search Premier, APA PsycINFO, and Sociological Abstracts. Google Scholar and backward citation searches were also conducted. Studies were included if they were peer-reviewed, published between 2010 and 2025, written in English, Portuguese, or Spanish, and employed qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods designs. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and scoping reviews were also eligible. Editorials, opinion pieces, conference abstracts, and non-peer-reviewed studies (with the exception of theses and dissertations) were excluded. Articles were filtered by relevance across all databases. Claude AI was used for search term generation, article insight extraction, and supplementary study identification when database searches alone did not retrieve meaningful results. Data was analyzed following a traditional thematic analysis approach.

Results: Findings were organized under four distinct themes: (I) the sociopolitical and policy context of immigrant advocacy in the U.S.; (II) organizations, immigrant advocacy, and well-being; (III) organizational climate and the advocacy process; and (IV) the personal implications of advocacy work. The review revealed deeply interconnected dynamics shaping immigrant advocacy. At the federal level, U.S. immigration policy has historically produced a deportable, exploitable workforce whose vulnerability serves both employer demand and a growing detention and deportation apparatus. At the state and local levels, immigration federalism has enabled the proliferation of exclusionary legislation, particularly across politically conservative jurisdictions. Despite these hostile conditions, organizations ranging from worker centers and nonprofits to grassroots networks have pursued legal advocacy, political mobilization, coalition building, and service provision to advance immigrant worker well-being. Worker centers, in particular, function as legal advocates, civic participation spaces, labor market regulators, and social intermediaries. The review also highlights how organizational climate, individual attitudes toward immigration, and the personal toll of advocacy work shape organizations' capacity and willingness to engage in immigrant advocacy.

Conclusions and Implications: This review underscores that immigrant advocacy is a dynamic, context-dependent process shaped by local political environments, organizational structures, and individual commitments. Distinctively, it identifies a critical empirical gap regarding how organizations in the U.S. Southeast advocate with and on behalf of Latine immigrant workers. The findings carry implications for macro social work practice and for policy efforts aimed at strengthening organizational capacity for immigrant rights advocacy, especially under restrictive policy environments.