The Community Action Research Initiative (CARI) is a small grants program that encourages and supports sociologists and communities using social science knowledge, methods, and expertise to address community-identified issues and concerns. CARI provides up to $3,000 for each project to cover direct costs associated with the community action research.
Current CARI award winners are listed below. Read about past winners here. Read more about how to apply here.
Please direct any questions to Heather M. Washington at [email protected] or 202-247-9854.
2024 Award Recipients
Nabila N. Islam, Brown University
Immigration Dialogue: Resisting and Raising Awareness about Digital Surveillance and Detention of Immigrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has promoted the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, its long-running digital surveillance and detention program, as a humanitarian and community-based alternative to immigration detention. The view from the ground, however, looks very different. Impacted immigrants with the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN), as well as other advocacy and activist organizations such as Detention Watch Network, Mijente, and Community Justice Exchange have all noted that ATD is not a true alternative to detention as it places immigrants under digital detention and 24/7 surveillance. Despite the unprecedented rise in the use of ATD in the wake of COVID-19, the public, academics, journalists, and other public sphere actors have little knowledge of the devastating impact of ATD on immigrants’ lives. Immigration Dialogue brings together eight immigrants impacted by ATD, a facilitator from BIJAN, and a researcher to address this lacuna and raise awareness and build power together. We are currently working on three projects with tangible outcomes: a social media video campaign where our members describe their first-hand experiences of the ATD program; co-authored blog posts on the Border Criminologies site maintained by Oxford University’s Faculty of Law and two future co-authored academic publications; and a multimedia website that includes video testimonies, written reflections, and artistic creations about the impact of ATD.
Janaina Saad, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dreaming Together: The Collective Organization of Support Centers for Informal Workers in Brazil
Against all odds, informal workers around the world have found innovative ways to collectively struggle for better living and working conditions. Given the limited reach of traditional labor unions among informal workers, these workers have relied largely on territorial forms of resistance and community organizing to improve their livelihoods. The Workers Without Rights Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Direito, MTSD)—a social movement organization that advocates for the rights of informal workers in Brazil—is emblematic of this type of labor organizing rooted in grassroots, solidarity-based, community action.
In collaboration with the Workers Without Rights Movement, this project will survey the working conditions of informal workers in the city of São Paulo and identify key grievances that can help direct the organization’s advocacy and organizing efforts. The survey will contribute to a broader campaign aimed at the collective provision of support centers for workers in the popular economy (Centros de Apoio aos Trabalhadores da Economia Popular). These support centers would offer street vendors, delivery workers, waste pickers and other precarious workers a place to eat, rest, use the restroom, store work tools, charge phones, and shelter from storms. In addition to advancing dignified working conditions, the support centers can provide a collective space for workers to develop the social ties that propel class solidarity.
Shelly Steward, The Workers Lab
Understanding and Addressing the Challenges of Disabled Workers
What policy-based solutions are needed to allow disabled workers to live, work, and thrive? The Workers Lab, an organization devoted to building a world in which all workers are safe, healthy, secure, and have power, is undertaking a project to answer this question, engaging disabled workers to understand the challenges they face and collaboratively design and implement solutions.
Disabled workers are more than twice as likely as non-disabled workers to rely on nonstandard work, which allows them to control their hours, introduce accommodations, and balance earnings with public benefits. These workers also face a range of challenges, including non-accommodating workplaces, no central enforcement entity, and strict earnings limitations.
Because their work tends not to show up in established data, disabled workers’ challenges remain largely invisible to both policymakers and the broader public. They are doubly excluded by their disability and by their work arrangements. Through participatory research, this project equips disabled workers to be researchers of their own conditions and voices for change. We are bringing together these workers to engage in open conversations about their challenge, participate in collaborative workshops to analyze these conversations, and ideate actionable solutions. Ultimately, we seek to develop concrete solutions to problems these workers face every day, while also challenging the power dynamics that continue to exclude them from policy design and decision-making.
