Abstract

ESCALA RABADAN, Luis; RIVERA-SALGADO, Gaspar  and  RODRIGUEZ, Rigoberto. Is More Necessarily Better?: Leadership and Organizational Development of Migrant Hometown Associations in Los Angeles, California. Migr. Inter [online]. 2011, vol.6, n.2, pp.41-73. ISSN 2594-0279.

Hometown associations (HTAS) in the United States are migrant, voluntary groups with a shared sense of belonging to a region in a different country of origin. Their philanthropic activities across borders have increasingly attracted the attention of government agencies and social and political actors. These actors have endeavored to form more HTAS and place greater demands on them to expand their civic engagement. This strategy, however, will not necessarily lead to that purpose, but instead will likely exacerbate a critical gap in the HTAS' organizational capacity. Th is paper argues that a different strategy is best suited to strengthen the organizational ability of HTAS, and proposes a framework to achieve this goal based on a capacity building pilot program for Latino HTAS from the Los Angeles region.

Keywords : hometown associations; capacity-building; Latin American migration; collaborative research; Los Angeles.