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Abstract Immigrant day laborers routinely experience exploitative behaviors as part of their employment. These day laborers perceive the exploitation they experience in the context of their immigration histories and in the context of their long-term goals for better working and living conditions. Using mixed methods, over three data collection periods in 2016, 2019 and 2020, we analyze the work experiences of immigrant day laborers in Houston and Austin, Texas. We report how workers evaluate precarious jobs and respond to labor exploitation in an informal labor market. We also discuss data from a worker rights training intervention conducted through a city-sponsored worker center. We discuss the potential for worker centers to be a convening and remediation space for workers and employers. Worker centers offer a potential space for informal intervention into wage theft and work safety violations by regulating the hiring context where day laborers meet employers.
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This content will become publicly available on October 31, 2026
Data Tactics in Worker Advocacy Research
This paper draws on Michel de Certeau’s notion of "tactics" to explore the use of data in labor organizing research in CSCW [? ]. Taking a historical view, we first analyze a set of cases from 20th century US labor history that offer three distinct lenses on the risks of data-based advocacy campaigns: wagers, compromises, and concessions. Across our cases, we frame reformers’ use of data tactics as a rhetorical move, taken to advance incremental worker gains under conditions of precarity [90, 105, 154]. However, by continuing to rely on certain data-based arguments in the short term, we argue that labor reformers may have limited the frame of debate for broader arguments necessary to improve conditions in the long-term. These tensions follow us into data-based advocacy research in the present, such as the emerging "digital workerism" movement [70]. To ensure the continuation of responsible advocacy research in CSCW, we offer insights from social justice movements to suggest how members of the HCI and CSCW communities can work more intentionally alongside (or without) data methods to support worker-led direct action.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2128954
- PAR ID:
- 10618225
- Editor(s):
- Lewkowicz, M; Schmidt, K
- Publisher / Repository:
- https://link.springer.com/journal/10606
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computer supported cooperative work CSCW
- ISSN:
- 1573-7551
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Human-centered computing HCI theory, concepts and models
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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