Conversations from around the coffee table: Exploring subaltern leadership

Abstract

Moving towards social justice requires a deconstruction of the current work and leadership systems that contribute to and are rooted in oppression. (Re) visioning leadership must exist outside to dismantle the dominant discourses. In the community, social justice work has the opportunity to use love and hope to guide the processes. This article presents the findings from our, the coauthor’s convivio – we are a group of women living in Canada, members of the Central American and South American diaspora. We gathered around a coffee table to discuss how leadership currently operates and the possibilities for a more collective future. What we term “subaltern leadership” represents the how we navigate our positions as leaders amidst marginalization as newcomers and as women. What evolved in this dialogue was the question of “can the subaltern lead in the current structure and nature of work?”. The findings support the notion that representation is only the beginning and can mirror tokenism when the same structures remain. To truly support subaltern leadership, a more radical shift must occur.

“One may also inhabit the limen, the place in between realities, a gap ‘between and betwixt’ universes of sense that construe social life and persons differently, an interstice from where one can most clearly stand critically toward different structures.” (Lugones, 2003: 13).

At the University where I (the first author) teach, there is a leadership specialization for social service practitioners at the graduate level and as a certification program. Students and I noticed an absence of articles by racialized newcomer women used in the program and the Canadian literature. Wanting to discuss the contributions of racialized newcomer women, I reached out to three women considered leaders in the community and workplace. The four of us have collaborated for over 10 years in our locality as helping professionals and members of the Central American and South American diaspora. Each of us has worked in the helping professions for more than three decades in Canada, from developing an NGO to serve newcomers and co-creating a grassroots organization that provides microloans to advocacy and policy development at the provincial level. We decided to meet for a convivio [Spanish meaning purposeful get-together accompanied by food and dialogue] to think collectively about our understanding of and vision of leadership as women and members of the Central American and South American diasporic communities. We discussed how our experiences and knowledge could contribute to the literature and respond to the lack of representation and ideologies outside of the Global North. The discussion around a coffee table focused on our identities and how we see and practice leadership in the community, family, and workplace. What emerged was an embodied practice of leadership. Our leadership exists amidst our histories and the imposition of difference and subalternity in Canada. The outcomes of the discussion are twofold: to develop a new lexicon of leadership in a way that challenges the Global North’s love affair with modernity. Secondly, to introduce a conceptually uncommon way of leading, what we termed—subaltern leadership.

From us

We, the women writing this paper, were and continue to be forcibly displaced from our homes due to ongoing coloniality that has exploited Central America and South America on the global stage, preventing peace within our borders. In these previously colonized spaces, gruesome violence was used to dispossess people of their lands, culture, knowledge, and way of life. Colonialism attempted to expand European imperialism with a model of capital accumulation that created wealth for the Spanish empire in what is now known as Central America and South America (Quijano, 2000). The Whiteness of the European empire was idealized as the fullness of humanity, designed to be race-neutral. Who was considered ‘fully human’ was designed to justify the erasure, murder, and enslavement of Indigenous and Black people to ‘conquer’ the lands. Coloniality is the contemporary remnants of imperialist theories of who is fully human, which informs whose knowledge is ‘right’ [or superior], what matters, who belongs, and where. A production of coloniality, whiteness, is both an identity and standpoint given meaning through contemporary social, political, and economic ways of life in the Global North. Whiteness refers to a constellation of preferred racial, gender, class, and ableist characteristics that inform the lens through which people see the world and determine value – the western gaze. The western gaze is idealized as synonymous with common sense (Carranza, 2018; Akun, 2021; Jeyapal and Bhuyan, 2016; Lee and Bhuyan, 2013). In leadership, it places whiteness and masculinity as ideal. It is a way of thinking and being in the world that relies on its characteristics of individualism, competition, binary logics, and paternalism (Akun, 2021).

Leadership is associated with power and privilege (Ospina and Foldy, 2009), which the we as subalterns are excluded from. In our collective displacement, strength from our history enabled the large-scale rebuilding and maintenance of a transnational ‘new way’ of life in the diaspora to which we belong. Transnationalism for us as Central American and South American women is characterized by solidarity, communidad (community), and familismo (strong family ties) within the larger collective. Becoming a member of the diaspora has meant our reception in Canada has been filtered through the western gaze, replicating the original colonial encounter with the western gaze and reconfiguring our identities. As newcomers to Canada, we experience a gendered process of racialization embedded in the resettlement process. The disciplining nature or resettlement enforces adherence to assimilative norms – but never allows us to belong fully. As a result, the dominant Canadian society sees us as the colonial migrant (Carranza, 2017). We are understood as being ‘pushed’ from our homes and ‘pulled’ to Canada, and lucky to be here. The push is the out-of-control violence that only happens ‘over there’ and pulled to Canada for upward mobility - the fabled ‘better life’. In our resettlement, we have found that the hegemonic narrative of immigration has marked us as a tabula rasa, with no history, experience, or knowledge, replaced with presumed criminality and a visual proxy for the “war on drugs” (Carranza, 2022). Where our gender, racialization, status as newcomers, accents, and the perceived backward nature of our countries of origin meet, keeps us in the margins. In our working in the helping professions, our subalternity produces a unique form of epistemic violence (Liu, 2022). What we represent – diversity, equity, and inclusion is valued visually, but our differences are silenced. As a result of these interlocking processes, we generally are not considered “leaders."

Subaltern leadership then appears contradictory. This contradiction asks, how can the subaltern be represented? How can subalternity and leadership co-exist? The margins constructing our identities: diasporic, female, and racialized, are relied upon by the Global North to maintain its privilege through exploitation. When Canada looks at us – we look, act and speak like we belong in the Global South, which is partly the basis for our exclusion from inhibiting ways of knowing and being. Our knowledge is viewed as not aligned with those who are seen as leaders. Subaltern leadership builds on Spivak’s (2003) conceptualization of space in ‘learning to learn from below’, which ‘contaminates’ hegemony. Extending this conceptualization to leading from below challenges the hegemonic whitespace of leadership. Leading in the space outside the dominant is less about traversing from the margins to the center but dismantling the bounds of exclusion.

Subalternity and coloniality

Our experience of forcible displacement, the borders of exclusion, and the gendered racial hierarchy can be traced to colonization. As newcomers, we are denied access to the privileges of Canada. As women, we experience the hegemonic forces of white heteropatriarchy that refuse to hear our voices in the mainstream – the subaltern. The subaltern is the assemblage of identities that are marginalized so the dominant can have greater access to privilege and power - often white men (Spivak, 2003).

The oppressor attempts to speak for and define the subaltern by attempting to silence, define and place non-Western ways of being and knowing in the margins (Spivak, 2003). When identities are not recognized, it centers those that belong. The subaltern, by proxy, validates ‘the best’ form of humanity and civilization. Spivak (2003) asks if and how the subaltern can be represented within hegemony and its discourses beyond an identity that is excluded from, marginalized, and constructed in opposition to the dominant. In this process, we are not represented as women, newcomers, and racialized people in the struggle for liberation(s). Our existence on the margins maintains the mainstream. Named in this paper subaltern leadership, this position calls attention to the socio-political structures that deny us the opportunity to be listened to and, at times, tokenize our existence.

The subaltern was created through colonization to privilege whiteness and eurocentrism. The Coloniality of Power (Quijano, 2000) traces the violence of creating race and how these categories legitimized domination and oppression. Coloniality is the long-lasting 'remnants' of colonialism. The remnants sustain the current racial hierarchy and power configurations through the capitalist exploitation of labor today – including epistemological privileging of whiteness (Levine-Rasky, 2016). Coloniality has propelled the Global North at the South’s expense. Advancement has required the restructuring of global capital to force countries in the Global South to mimic the advancement of the North, leading to the displacement of millions (Castro-Klarén, 2008). By design, these processes continue to add value to whiteness in establishing its superiority and the “right way” of doing things (Okun, 2021). Whiteness intertwined with patriarchy has attempted to silence Black, Indigenous, and racialized women by placing them at the margins (Lugones, 2008; Spivak, 2003). It is often racialized women who are barred from political agency and prevented from gaining social capital by the epistemic violence that devalues their knowledge and existence (Liu, 2022). When women migrate, their identities become the intersection of citizenship, racialization, and construction of their gender, placing them further from the axis of power – a different process than their male counterparts (Carranza, 2021).

Colonialism introduced a gender system not in place in pre-colonial societies (Oyēwùmí, 1997). Patriarchy is a binary system of gender that was created in Europe to define and enforce social roles within whiteness and worth in the capitalist economy. The bourgeois white ideas of gender were intertwined with race and the class-based division of labor, placing white men at the top (Lugones, 2008). Understanding how whiteness organizes gender speaks to how Black, Indigenous, and Racialized men were constructed as inferior to white men and segregated from their female counterparts. The racialized and gendered economy of colonization remains embedded in ideologies of the ‘breadwinner,’ advancement, and leadership positions.

The companion process to coloniality is modernity, where advancement and progress are the pinnacles of achievement (Mingolo et al., 2002). Under modernity, moving up is the ideal state of being in the workplace, community, financially – and most importantly, having power (Icaza and Vázquez, 2016). Modernity sees the ideology of ‘a better life’ as the main driver for people leaving their country of origin to erase the violence of coloniality. Coloniality and modernity maintain the epistemic foundations and eurocentric ways of being as the norm – the way things “are done around here”. This production of norms continually recreates whiteness as a backdrop and organizing principle (Jeyapal and Bhuyan, 2016). Whiteness is the foundation informing who belongs, who does not, and why (Lee and Bhuyan, 2013; Razack, 2009).

Belonging and exclusion are both individual and systemic. Newcomers from the Global South are seen through a lens of difference as we are viewed as less skilled, not adaptable, and cannot be ‘as Canadian’ as people born here and ex-pats from Europe. Newcomers must start over, sometimes ‘get over’, and leave our histories, knowledge(s), communities, activism, political engagement, and resistance to colonial violence (Carranza, 2017). One of our (the Authors’) common experiences is being tokenized and bestowed with the fabled belief that we can ‘speak for’ all newcomers or racialized women and their experiences. As women from ‘shithole’ countries, as referred to by the 45^th President of the United States, we are often assigned stereotypes associated with Latin America. These stereotypes range from gang activity and narco-trafficking (Poteet and Simmons, 2014), the overly sexualized, sassy Latina (Méndez-Morse, 2003), the nanny and pupusa maker (Carranza, 2021) to wives and mothers who are submissive and bound by machista [male dominance] culture (Méndez-Morse, 2003). We are expected to be grateful and assimilate into Canadian ways, including the labor market and workplace culture, to gain ‘Canadian experience.’ No matter the degree of assimilation, we remain locked out of belonging, and the promise of upward mobility remains elusive.

The clause of different but equal in the social policies of multiculturalism in Canada does not necessarily translate into the workplace. Workplaces often reflect structures of whiteness, which continues to position the characteristics of white masculinities as ideal for leadership. It is not simply the under-representation of some identities and over-representation of men in high-ranking positions that racializes and genders this role. Instead, this process is embedded in leadership praxis by the value placed on the knowledge and characteristics attributed to masculinity (Fotaki, 2013). White masculine characteristics, such as individualism, competition, paternalism, and either/or thinking, have been enshrined as the standard of what a ‘good’ leader does (Okun, 2021). These characteristics of the gendered symbolic order shape the language, ideologies, and assumptions of leadership and who should and should not yield power (Pullen and Vachhani, 2017). Despite the popularity of diversity, equity, inclusion, and representation initiatives, this culture of exclusion maintains the appearance and epistemology of whiteness in leadership (Okun, 2021). This culture has created a well-worn pathway to leadership for particular identities.

The well-worn pathway to leadership

Nkomo (2011) points to the western hegemony and the remnants of colonization that haunt leadership. Organizations are intended to fit men more than women, supporting a naturalization process of the pathway to power (Breithaupt, 2015; Saint-Michel, 2018). The gender disparity is present in stereotypically feminized professions – i.e., teaching, nursing, and social work (Ispa-Landa and Thomas, 2019). In Canada, as in the United States, white men are at the top of the economic, social, and political hierarchies—thought to be the pinnacle of success (Adejumo, 2021). With over three decades of research on women in leadership, the gender bind remains, with female subjectivities defined in relation to masculinities (Pullen and Vachhani, 2020) or in comparison to the non-white body. The liberalist approach of adding women or a non-white body has reinforced adherence to norms of masculinity and whiteness of the Global North (Nkomo, 2011). Pullen and Vachhani (2020) write that women’s leadership cannot be examined in the space of difference to men’s because the focus on difference re-establishes a gender binary. Women’s leadership is understood within a masculine frame. Extending this to intersect with race and gender means opening up analysis to leadership as an embodiment of gender, citizenship, and race. The experiences discussed within subaltern leadership are unequivocally contradictory in name and work.

This allotment of power allows for the naturalization of the ideal qualities. These qualities determine ‘who’ can be a leader, how leadership is best practiced, and how organizations are structured, including their culture. Ahmed’s (2019) theory of ‘orientation’ describes who, how, when, and which identities can inhibit spaces. A well-traveled path of leadership is constructed through the repetition of allowable identities that have and continue to inhibit this space. The ‘way it is done’ as in one ‘right’ way, rational, logical, and objective, has become an unspoken doctrine (Okun, 2021) - so that when white women and racialized men lead-they are encouraged to take on some of these characteristics. The well-worn pathway has led to the understanding of men as competent, rational, and worthy of power over women and the racialized other (Pullen and Vachhani, 2020) – the subaltern. Despite acknowledging the need for equity, diversity, and inclusion, the dominance of whiteness remains untouched.

The path is theoretically open to all with ‘hard work,’ but only some are welcomed and feel safe traversing it. The pathway serves as a metaphor for upward mobility. ‘Moving up’ represents modernity: advancement, achievement, and progress. Encouraging the desire for advancement speaks to how whiteness hinges on an ideology of progress and individualism. Upward mobility is promised to newcomers in Canada ideologically. This promise does not consider the structural barriers in the actualization process—specifically in obtaining the social capital necessary to ‘get ahead’ (Carranza, 2017). Migration and resettlement are met with experiences of microaggressions (Hernández et al., 2010), negative stereotyping (Poteet and Simmons, 2014), lack of recognition of credentials (Houle and Yssaad, 2010), barriers to lack of meaningful employment (Sethi and Williams, 2015) and lack of affordable housing (Carranza, 2017). For many newcomers, these factors have led to poverty (Kaida, 2015) and limited their capacity to advance in organizations or pursue educational opportunities. The structure of labor and ‘advancement’ has been built by whiteness for whiteness, whereas newcomers, especially women, are to be thankful for any job.

In recent decades, whiteness has opened leadership spaces to a small number of Black, Indigenous, and racialized men. The expectations of masculinity in their leadership remain. Gender diversity is only in the form of white female leadership (Pullen and Vachhani, 2017). Women are either expected to align with masculine characteristics or engage in care leadership, which is less valued. Diversity, equity, and inclusion in workplaces hinge on visual representations of those outside the dominant social order. Representation as a method of structural change has made gains in hiring and, to a lesser degree, promoting marginalized identities. Belonging in an organization is bound to leadership (Adejumo, 2021). Diverse leadership is thought to appeal to potential applicants as a measure of progress that fosters inclusivity and organizational belonging so representation with no organizational shift does little to open space for those who have been Othered in Canada (Adejumo, 2021). For racialized women, their leadership and collective work almost always occurs in an environment of marginality and stereotypes (Méndez-Morse, 2003), racism (Ospina and Foldy, 2009), and racialized sexism (Smith and Nkomo, 2003). It is amidst the maintenance of exclusion in social and workplace cultures, including diversity initiatives, in which subaltern leadership exists.

The ‘convivio’ [The gathering]

In the convivio we discussed activism, community engagement, and work. We spoke about how our culturally similar backgrounds concerning a sense of communidad [community] and familismo [family] shape our leadership and lives. For us, relational life is not in opposition to the liberal frames of individualism but on the other end of the spectrum. The discussion was guided by questions about how we perform and experience leadership as members of the Central American and South American diaspora. We attempted to deconstructs whiteness and maleness to reimagine leadership as a practice in and through relationality. The re-visioning of leadership moved away from individualism, favoring collective labor, movements, and spaces, relational and non-hierarchal. Subaltern leadership represents how we navigate our positions as leaders in the margins. What evolved in this dialogue were the questions: can the subaltern lead in the current structure of work and labor? How does the desire to live a collective life fit/not fit in this structure? These are also the structures that shape resettlement, lived realities, and the contours of exclusion. The convivio utilized storytelling to articulate our embodied processes, with the assemblage of our identities as the starting point.

A convivio as a research method can situate personal experience as a form of resistance to the dominant culture, as women and their narratives are often discounted, challenged, and ignored (Ngunjiri and Hernández, 2017). It is aligned with social justice work to center those impacted (Jones et al., 2012). We acknowledge our viewpoints were inextricably linked to our identities as women, exiled in a foreign land and marked as the racial Other, the subaltern(s). We co-developed a set of guiding questions before the meeting. This informal process ensured an open space to mirror the storytelling of our ancestors, embodied knowledge, and a rich discussion (Jeyapal and Bhuyan, 2016). The questions were created to illicit how people make sense of their lifeworld and the context in which they live (Bevan, 2014). By utilizing embodied realities as a source of ‘data,’ it was expected that the stories would challenge and expand what it is like to be an outsider/within spaces with established and dominant leaders (Ngunjiri and Hernández, 2017). The nexus of gender, race, and nationality are the pieces that are often silenced, and these components are crucial in foregrounding new leadership praxis. Looking from this nexus, combined with “learning to learn from below,” exposes how the identity of ‘the leader’ has been socially constructed to maintain the race and gender hierarchy (Ciulla and Forsyth, 2013; Spivak, 2003).

At the end of the discussion, we reflected on the most salient points of our dialogue. The convivio was recorded, and we completed the data analysis via ‘paper and pen’ and open coding (St Pierre and Jackson, 2014). Themes related to what the group determined as the priority were developed, to elevate the concept of subaltern leadership. The writing was iterative between the authors to ensure authenticity and triangulation of the data (Hernández et al., 2021). The following section presents the key themes of the dialogue: structural exclusion and subaltern leadership.

Structural exclusion

During the convivio, we began by defining how ‘leadership’ is practiced in Canada by white men and women and how it is in Central America and South America. As we discussed Canadian ways, one of us mentioned, “are we talking about white leadership here?”. Most leaders we experienced were born in Canada and were white, as with our workplaces. In this way, we noted that whiteness provided a way of belonging. It was “being part of the white boys club” in how people looked, sounded, and their way of thinking. It was not only being white but the coded behaviors, the belief that there is one way of doing things (the Canadian way), advancing individualism and competitiveness. This ideology was formalized in that “everything is so structured in this society, each organization has specific requirements to get hired, get a raise and who can lead people. There is no desire for change”. Moving up was determined by those with power, based on who is the ‘best fit’ or has the most knowledge and skills. In this way, the epistemic violence of valuing Canadian knowledge and who 'fits' automatically placed us in the margins.

Being “granted access” was a phrase used concerning people who belonged. There is a way of knowing and being that is natural when one grows up in Canada or a country of the Global North that intentionally excludes particular identities. It is often commonplace that people “know someone to get them a job, or they know the same places, or go to the same school.” It was identified that “when you grow up here [and are] white, these privileges are just your life, natural, normalized.” People who fit in have a “credibility that is never questioned” in their current and previous experiences, education, and knowledge. Credibility and belonging allow people to navigate the workplace easily, to know how to prepare and perform in an interview and have social capital and resources. The coworkers and friends that had access to this insider status often led initiatives in the workplace, mentored, and promoted. This being on the inside granted access to mobility and the pathway to leadership.

We noted that many never acknowledge the privilege that they have, projecting an image of being self-made and working their way up. It was our collective observation that on their “way up,” people often did not notice that it was at the expense of others. The invisibility of whiteness allowed people to believe they worked hard - favoring individualism. All of us had heard people say, “I paid my dues, I work hard,” meaning that they have earned the promotion, and “I don’t think because of this people will give up their space, their privilege.” People wanted to keep their privileges and keep the mode of operation. In one of our organizations:

they asked me to meet with the Leadership, and I said we need to bring to the senior leaders and the board diversity. But diversity never came. They said that they all had different experiences, lawyers and doctors, so there was enough diversity. They told me that racialized people never seem to have the qualifications

An initiative on equity, with training and workshops, was held at one of our organizations. The leadership team said, "it’s the people on the frontlines that need to go, not us.” Which is problematic, as we agreed that “the top needs to participate in change” because “all the policies are there but the people implementing them are white. I don’t think they will give up spaces that easily”. Diversity was for those who did not belong. We knew we did not belong because "it’s the looks that people born here, mostly white people give each other – it’s like you’re watching an inside conversation that you will never be understood in – because they don’t understand your accent".

Despite working in the helping professions, privilege extended to whether or not to be engaged and understand issues impacting marginalized people and our communities. Activism and community work are other examples. One of us stated for those who belong, “you [they] just live your life white-you never have to learn about us [racialized newcomer women], you never have to care or know about starting over in this way”. Each of us needed to provide initiative and leadership to help people understand 'us' or the issues at hand. When people were involved, we found that ideologies of individualism extended to this work. A story of community activism was recounted “I’ve been involved with [group] for 4 years – and changes have happened, but no one knows how to advocate for themselves, no one is leading except the paid position. This is not leadership, this is power hoarding”. The ‘leader’ was the director and decision maker. In reflecting on this, we thought about our forced adaptation to engaging in individualism as a group.

Fear and enforced individualism

Sense of connection and community shifts significantly upon arrival to Canada. In the workplace, “it is believed in Canada that when you work together – someone doesn’t pull their weight – if you let people take advantage of you, it’s your fault.” So we tried to work alone but build connections in new ways. It was stated:

We, newcomers become individualistic in this country. You come from a place that is more communal, collective and something happens, sometimes you are targeted for working together for change - and you have to leave or escape or you have to change, because of fear or you come here. All of a sudden you are a number, when you arrive you are a box, a number. Your rights are individual rights, that's all you have. You have no choice to only think about yourself you have to cover yourself.

Being assigned a number was the first signal to us and other newcomers we have spoken with—a shift away from being in community. It also signaled that we would not be safe if we acted collectively, meaning the need to survive differently. Survival translated into navigating a new form of social structure in isolation that did not allow for communal ideologies or working together. We all spoke about how ways of being in community and relationally nurtured in Central America and South America clashed with the denigration of interdependence in the Global North.

The ideology of individualism was communicated through scarcity. The message was that there were not enough – jobs, housing, money, and education. It was mentioned that “you are told, directly and in other ways that there is not enough for everyone. Not enough jobs, not enough work, and you gotta keep trying to get more. You have to put yourself first, is what you are told”. Further, “if you try to work together, you are not respected, you’re not “fitting in,” you should be able to do it yourself”. In resettlement we learned to “protect the very little you have”. Enforced individualism activated the feelings that motivated migration, the “fear makes you leave, and here you are an individual and fear makes you believe in individualism”. Further, “you must protect yourself first and not disclose what you have and not allow people to get to know you” which stifled relationships.

Survival meant the accumulation of capital. The message was “to move up in your employment is the best way for security and so your family can be okay”. This form of individualism, and fabled pursuit of upward mobility, was never aligned with collectivism and always at the expense of others. Each of us had to align ourselves with this mentality to survive but always focused on community and tried to weave in sharing power where we could. When we pushed back, it was not received well, “when I said something, no one wanted to give up privilege and the community would lose resources if they pushed back, and it was white women in power.” It is believed that “the scarcity mentality runs deep, and it makes us not be together.” It was hard to overcome the divisions in the Latin American community in the diaspora, with class and gender, and amidst newcomers as a whole.

Racism, microaggressions, and fabled promises

In the workplace, “we had to learn to be silent, learn when to speak and learn how to navigate our new spaces.” However, even when we did, “I worked with this white male [profession] and he thought I was stupid, it was constant. Its how I learned what microaggressions were”. When workplace cultures were not required to change, and other ways of knowledge and being were not valued, racism flourished. With no structural impetus for change, “they claim the playing field is level and it’s not—and what results, is racism and microaggressions” further, “it gets worse when you identify it.” When a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative was introduced in the workplace, “the white coworkers started questioning us in new ways, like they just started acting like we were stupid.” When pushing for change in an organization, it was recalled that “I suffered, the accent, the recognition, the education, the capacity."

We were seen as lucky when we were promoted. Space was never reimagined to be safe for us as racialized women. We were expected to be patient and wait for change to achieve growth and upward mobility. This waiting was a shared experience between us – to get more experience, publications, funding, knowledge, training, and relationships with coworkers while our counterparts changed careers and were promoted. Each of us recalled being denied opportunities for advancement for varying reasons. For example, “in the current class structure, moving up requires money and connections-which we do not have.” Each of us recounted how people became leaders through ‘rubbing shoulders' with those above you the ‘Canadian way.’ Informally, advancement opportunities exist in networks for colleagues from which we were marginalized. For those locked into the margins of societies and workplaces, these relationships or connections did not exist. Advancement was seen as “a rare combination of timing, luck, and skills for newcomers – this does not happen much” this was attributed to “because we don’t blend in, we disrupt just by being here."

White people in our workplaces had significantly more labor mobility and opportunities for advancement due to the structure of work, various networks, and different life-related complications. As newcomer women, we agreed, “I have to think about my kids, my mortgage, my family- I was not able to take career risks in the way that white men can. Not that I don’t love my job, but I know that there is security in working with other newcomers – anywhere else, me and my accent would be a risk”. There is a safety net of family, friends, and professional networks for those born in Canada. Furthermore, our experience from the Global South was considered sub-par and worthless. We all knew that if we tried to move up, we would not be supported to do so, and if successful, we questioned if we would be respected in a leadership position.

Tokenism

We each noted that our caseloads or areas often focused on newcomers or other racialized identities. It was assumed that we ‘knew’ all the issues, it was an essentializing assumption that “we are all the same, sort of way.” When we were offered new opportunities, they were often related to diversity, inclusion, and equality focused. Most often, the opportunities had no reduction in workload or additional pay. We led these programs and initiatives with little power to make changes or systemic attention. It seemed that “it was like because we have accents and weren’t born here we can be an example for others who aren’t white because we know their issues.” It was added, “it’s also because they don’t care. They don’t care about us in the workplace or think we can be leaders, and they don’t care about giving people good service even though working with people is what we are funded for”.

Credibility and hard work are never attributed to newcomer women because we still need to “catch up,” and once that happens, we can ‘sacrifice and pay your dues'. One of us recalled, “I’ve been here a long time and just now I have a good job - we have to prove ourselves and work and it took me a long time. I’ve done a lot of jobs and never been looked at as someone who knows anything”. Further, “this good job is working and doing programs with newcomers, which I was doing before but now its official” and “it not changing anything at the organizations its almost like a separate thing, it also doesn’t change my pay”. Tokenism places us in a box– our previous experiences do not matter, and our importance is related to our ability to represent diversity. We completed degrees here in Canada that we had already done, upgraded our skills, and learned or improved our English, attempting to fit in and align ourselves with how things are done. Not mattering, it was told to us subtly by saying, “things are different here in the [helping professions], you’ll learn,” to being told to take previous non-Canadian experience off our resume when applying for a promotion. Despite leading resistance movements and NGOs in our countries of origin, this knowledge and experience became invisible. Herein lies the erasure of our identities and existence as ‘inferior’ beings. Yet, we were enough to support other racialized people and newcomers – subalterns. Reinforcing the sanctioned not knowing we often experienced.

Workplace policies and culture always explicitly and implicitly ensure that racialized women and newcomers align with the standards. This standardization of whiteness remained but was visually hidden by diversity. One of us said, “I knew what they were doing, but I stayed because I love my job and as an immigrant woman with an accent I know there is nowhere to go – so I’m the token.” The rhetoric of diversity in the convivio found that “diversity was promised, but it never came.” With this standardization, whiteness was also enforced: “they say they want more women, more races, but then they implement policies to control [it]. You don’t like how women dress? Create a policy, so she has to change…tools of oppression”. In this case, continually shifting the administrative policies created an atmosphere where personal safety and job security were constantly ruptured. This instability detracted from moving beyond representation. Diversity initiatives lacked any substance in knowledge or process shifts, rendering this change meaningless. In speaking about her promotions, one of us noted she was never given any access to power despite being a manager, and information was not provided to her intentionally. She recalled, “it was over a year before I knew I had a budget and what my budget was. I got in trouble for going over. But how could I have known?”. We all agreed that this tied into tokenism and attributed to the invisibility of privilege, which meant that structural change was never prioritized. Often, tokenism is - a job title change and the illusion of equality coupled with microaggressions.

‘Fitting into the mold’

Being a leader in the current organizational structure was viewed as positive, but the opportunity was rare. Upon reflection, one of us recalled, “my leadership was seen as a threat in that system, my voice was crushed.” It was thought that “I was at the right place at the right time,” and when it did happen, there was a requirement to “fit into a mold.” To survive in the workplace and even more so to move up, “we either have to muscle ourselves or get muscled,” meaning we must engage in advancing individualism and competition. Further, “you have to be a YES person, always YES YES YES.” To do so, one must become “a part of the machine and a part of the established system.” In different ways, we each noted that occupying leadership positions meant taking on the “colonial mentality of dividing and conquering, like what they did in our countries.” It was “the impossible bind of neoliberalism,” where representation, which is supposed to advance social justice, is limited to the face of leadership. We noted there is danger in taking on these characteristics, even if it is for the larger or long-term goal of making changes – “if you accept a little bit of corruption, you are corrupt.” However, when leading in the mold, “there is opportunity to make change…sometimes”.

The expectations were higher when we, and other newcomer women in our organizations, were leaders. Opposition to our knowledge and authority occurred more frequently than our male and white counterparts. We found that we were questioned more on our processes than other leaders, our judgments subtly and directly challenged, and our managers/leaders were brought into discussions more frequently. Recounting a leadership experience, “I was expected to be transparent, which meant explaining my decisions, which is fine, but I was already open and tried to work collaboratively this did not happen to my white coworkers.” The expectation is to consider yourself ‘above’ people as a leader. This hierarchy is inherent within the structure of work and class in Canada. Engaging with collaborators and partners often brought surprise that we managed projects and were leaders within our respective organizations. Even with our best efforts to fit the mold - we each noted that our leadership is practiced differently. We believe that we should “conspire and inspire” people. In this work, “we are not gatekeepers, we are gate openers.”

Subaltern leadership

In our identities, we represent the Other or the subaltern, opposing the foundation for constructing an ideal citizen and worker. The ideal is not racialized, speaks English without a non-western accent, and fits into Canadian society. We have had to learn and navigate our resettlement, including our work, in/on the margins. Opportunities were offered to us last, or we had to advocate for ourselves and our community to access them. In the margins is where we carved a place to lead and challenge whiteness – we contaminate hegemony with our presence, accents, and refusal to assimilate. We are expanding the boundaries of the margins, and ours “is just a different kind of leadership.”

In the discussion, leading from the margins was explored, “I’m going to tell you the word that comes to my mind, we lead from below and I think its subalterna (English: subaltern) leadership.” The notion of the matrix of power was a part of the lived reality, “we have to operate as the subordinate, at work, in our families and community BUT this position means we hold it together.” We are the foundation, the threads. It was explained that “this was leadership in a different way, building, connecting and relating – its supporting each other.” We thought, “if we don’t pay attention, people, our families will fall through the cracks.” So, while there was a sense of marginalization—as “existing outside the engranaje” [ensemble of the machine/system of power], that are pieces of our collective and community existence. Building together was a way of leadership. It is more than collaboration – it is a collective. Our role was to “lead in balance.” When exploring what subaltern leadership is, we discussed how it is about working with people holistically, listening and believing people when they talk about their struggles, and seeing people in the fullness of their humanity. Most importantly, it is about decentring power.

We advocate “for the power of one – because we’ve seen it!”. Subaltern leadership sees beyond the limits of what can be done. It is assisting people with their asylum applications, reuniting families, and strategically using our jobs to advocate for people. It connects struggles to larger issues to improve access to services and reduce structural exclusion. For us, it is a way of being. It is a way of togetherness that moves things forward in work, life, home, family, and community. We were/are leaders in the workplaces, community, and family through support and accompanying others on their journey – for our collective good. For us, subaltern leadership is a part of the community, and “if you have power, you get rid of it, you use it and give it to community.” This space exists in tandem with that of the dominant because “we create our own space in the proximity of our reality.” The ideologies inform this labor are of collectivism and social justice in Central America and South America.

The duplicity of subaltern leadership

Subaltern leadership presents duplicity. In the present, as a matter of survival, leadership must be navigated in the current structure while pushing, where safe, for change. It emerged in this discussion as occurring at work in covert ways. For example, adapting programs to suit newcomers' needs or using the agency’s mandate to advocate at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Subaltern leadership creates space for people to learn, grow and feel safe – and use our positions to find cracks to push for change. We use our connections across the helping professions to work together.

Each of us was involved in large-scale and community activism in our countries to dismantle oppression and injustice. We advocated for rights and an end to coloniality. We continue this work by humanizing the box and the number assigned to women, men, and families upon arrival. We are creating arts and knowledge mobilization to bring information to the community to better understand and relate to our reality. It is changing the white space of social services through representation, mentorship, and thinking about our collective good. Leadership from below in the margins is based on being in relationship, mutuality, community development, and a sense of collectivism. Each of our lives was marked by “generational trauma that is in our DNA,” but still, “we are here.” It is often women who do this work, “in community meetings is women, in workshops women, its women cooking, it’s the maternal side, its labor and love. A labor of love.” Further, “we all have this feminine, the maternal the caring, but in the North it’s not considered important.” We may not have a voice in the larger structure, but “we don’t sound like everyone else, but we have something to say.” Subaltern leadership emerges from the grassroots, from people and their lived realities.

There was a consensus that subaltern leadership is not welcome in the mainstream – but that the margins needed to shift to bring more love and care into dominant spaces. Structurally, this leadership moves away from capitalist ideology to liberate people from notions of individualism, one-way thinking, and the either/or. According to the group, the pathway to achievement is being co-constructed by newcomer, racialized, Black, and Indigenous peoples “mostly the women, mothers and grandmothers.” Living “in exile” deepened our analysis and perspectives on power. This analysis left us to question: “how can people with corrupted power move with love if they forget they have power?” and wonder if subaltern leadership exists only on the margins?

Collectivism is in our roots

The assemblage of identity shaped all our spaces: “we don’t sound like everyone else, I have a thick accent. We have to wear our brown skin everywhere we go”. To work within these markings, we had to carve out space, “we have to give ourselves spaces to heal.” Making space inclusive of using our collective roots and connection to community, land, and nature to heal and navigate white space daily. Being in relationship with family and community was a resource for rejuvenation – speaking Spanish (even though it is the colonizer’s language), food, and connecting with the natural world is both resistance and healing. The focus on individualism and disconnection from nature and the land represents a different way of life we are moving away from.

Our roots and history were a central theme. Hierarchies exist in Central America and South America, but these did not structure community work/development, organizing, and political agency to the same degree. Operationalization of rights in Central America and South America focuses less on the individual and more on community and relational well-being. We remain focused on being good family and community members. Collectivism was the foundation for our politics and community engagement. In Canada, “whatever you could do for others, is a special feature, but in my country, that’s just how we lived. It not an approach, its life”. This mentality was the same in volunteering. Ironically, each of us was encouraged to volunteer in our respective professions to gain Canadian experience to “give back” and engage in philanthropism. For us, “it’s not considered volunteering to see a member of your family or community, or even someone you don’t know “in need” and come to them with care.” Further, “recognizing that someone needs you, or getting a group together to do something is not leadership from where we come from, it’s just what you do to be good in your community.”

Community-building and the collective

We have done formal and informal community work and continually engage in collective action here in Canada. Our pathway to this process is often identity-based and related to issues that impact our community and us. Subaltern leadership recognizes that whiteness harms us all, and we have a role in dismantling all oppression. The labor of racialized women created activist spaces. The work of those on margins brought people together, identifying violence and exclusion and the planning, the legwork, that was rarely recognized. When people from the dominant space joined, often white people, they brought their processes and ways of working with them. Recalling her experiences in a social justice campaign, “It’s the white women that take over, the activists. But it’s the racialized, the immigrant women, setting up the chairs, taking down the chairs, and doing the work-they come and take over. But it’s not their life or death situation-it’s ours!”. This is subaltern leadership. Further, “it is us that does the love work, the caring, the feeding – white women and sometimes men just show up. This happens in community and in work”. We hope that subaltern leadership can be an alternative to the dominant form of leadership and “the guilt of privilege and refusal to give up power.” Subaltern leadership often goes unrecognized.

Despite the various challenges presented, the group concurred that continuing the work was of great significance for our family’s future and the betterment of the collective – as a culture rooted in collectivism. As newcomers to Canada, there was an attempt for our education, knowledge, and experience to be erased, as it was considered inferior to western knowledge – yet, we draw on these in our subaltern leadership to work toward change. It was this learning from below that informed our successes in subaltern leadership. Wherein individually and/or collectively, we are contributing to making our communities and places of employment more equitable. We hope to hope space for all leadership.

Analysis and discussion

Due to a legacy of colonialism, we experience an assumption of incompetence compounded by our histories and the erasure of experiences in Canada – this supports the broader literature on resettlement in the Global North. In Canada, there is a sanctioned ignorance of assumptions made that who were not born here need to ‘catch up’ on how things are done. This reinforcement of colonial logics, presumes our ways in the Global South are backward. In leadership roles, we were expected to look and act like we knew what we were doing in ways our white counterparts were not. When performing well, people were often surprised. When we campaigned for change, to lead with love, the pushback we experienced was based on our position at the margins and not knowing how things are done here in Canada. Thinking outside of the box was never afforded to us, or our ways of knowing, unless for tokenism. Transparency and working collectively were used to question us and challenge the inclusion of the ethics and caring nature of the feminine. Diversity initiatives geared towards representation provided a smoke screen of belonging and inclusion. Despite these barriers of racism and microaggressions, we still act as leaders in our organizations and community.

The discussion led to the conclusion that leadership, as practiced currently, is the domain of white men and whiteness. Leadership reflects the larger structure of work, individualism, competition, perfectionism, and moving up. When women are leaders, the structural reinforcement is to adopt that particular style, but that small changes matter – the power of one. Power is never one-dimensional. When women lead, they continue to exist within the patriarchal structure, and in our experiences, we had to create spaces of safety. When racialized women are leaders, they need to redefine these roles and support each other to do so. Nevertheless, their leadership can be tokenized or appears to be, and they must consistently prove themselves to those above and below them. Racialized female leaders will continue to exist within an engranaje [system] that marginalizes them at the intersections of their identities.

One intersection for us was our personal experiences of leaving a country due to safety, coupled with this reinforcement, shaped our livelihood through fear of not conforming. Pushing back in Central America and South America signaled a threat of violence. In Canada, there are other consequences. Each of us carried this fear – deportation, loss of jobs, for pushing too hard, so we learn how to find opportunities to resist. Racism and structural oppression exacerbates these traumatic experiences and intentionally shatter collectivism in the diaspora. As a result, we are marked in our interactions. We have found new ways of joining existing and building communities that are respective of our histories and transnational relationships.

If leading with love and hope is to actualize, there must be a path to systemic change and dismantling such dominant discourses. Structural oppression sees that resources and opportunities for newcomers are scarce, leaving people needing to be cautious about losing what they have. Scarcity meant we had to find ways to be creative on the margins. We are consistently pushing for changes that work towards impacts for everyone — newcomers and those that were born in Canada. The power of one and shared power reaffirms the importance of dismantling the one right, or best way of thinking type logic for how to work and lead. The convivio described a re-envisioning of leadership that emerged from our roots – resistance to oppression, experiences of collectivism, and in the diaspora—leading from below challenges the dominant discourse by refusing to assimilate. Working for all, not just one – means making decisions together and ensuring power flows around and not just through us. Perspectives from us, newcomer women, who have been racialized in our resettlement in Canada, offer criticism of leadership as a power position and a radical, liberated re-envisioning of how to lead. The ideal of humanity is not us—the colonial migrant. This nuanced perspective is not in opposition to the masculine or whiteness. Instead, it speaks to accompanying and transforming processes within organizations.

Subaltern leadership is relational and reflects our ancestral knowledge of how we lived collectively before colonization, orally passed down over generations and transnationally. In the Global North, collectivity focused on connection and love is often undervalued and relegated to the margins. The description of labor spoke to how we work to promote love and hope in all areas of our lives, working towards social justice – it encourages approaches that come from care. This re-visioning did not separate community from work and family but instead painted a tapestry of our connections. Subaltern leadership brings these connections together in shared success—our systems in balance with one another, ideally including land and nature. Relational perspectives challenge the matrix of power and privilege – a form of hierarchal living that supports the capitalist economy. In our leadership, we keep asking questions of those above us. This type of conversation encourages people to think about their position. In a time that is moving towards anti-racism, it can facilitate the dismantling of power. We place value on those we are working with. We place value on all the tasks involved in work and organizing to reduce hierarchy.

We send emails, organize, and work to bring each other together – leading with love. This could be for coffee, or for activism. In our communities, love exists around kitchen tables – convivios- and in the spaces of resistance away from the dominant gaze and the capitalist push for individualism. In the convivio and analyzing the data, each of the authors raised more questions than answers. Each of us experienced the organizational impetus towards inclusion that never arrived – we had to make it ourselves, and we did. When these opportunities for upward mobility actualized, there was a feeling of tokenization and a lack of ability to be ourselves – but we showed up. Organizations wanted representation, not the subaltern’s knowledge, experience, accents, and identities, but we used it anyways and helped reunite families and start small buisnesses. We navigate this with our accents and keep speaking until people understand us. In this way, we realized that pushing for change must be within these confines and that small acts will eventually create an impact.

In this conversation, the concept of subaltern leadership emerged from a lens reflective of race, gender, and citizenship. While born out of living in the diaspora, experiences of racism, and un-actualized promises, it opened possibilities to work with those otherwise marginalized in white spaces. Rooted in agency, a subaltern identity forged and invited creativity, resourcefulness, and building a new sense of community in work and life. Mentorship featured prominently in creativity and a path forward. Organizational support for racialized women to connect, learn from, and support was agreed to be essential in the path forward. This support would allow leaders to work towards dismantling oppressive structures inside the workplace, building connections and safety. These discussions, especially newer forms of leadership, are just beginning. Mentorship also pays homage to the unique experiences that those who share marginalized identities possess and cannot receive in traditional ways. For example, employee programs, self-care narratives, and mentorship from other white or male colleagues do not meet the needs of newcomer women in the workplace. Safe spaces can only be created by those with similar or parallel identities and supported by chosen allies or co-conspirators. This paper supports the notion that representation is only the beginning. To truly support racialized women not born in Canada, a more radical shift must occur – which activism and the collective are working towards. We are a part of a collective strategy in our organizations that are a part of a movement to protect racialized women through connections, care, and community—this type of action fuels systemic change. Even when we lead, we still represent subaltern identities and ways of life a reminder of colonialism tried to erase us, but was unsuccessful. We remain a constant reminder of the failure to exterminate us and refuse to keep us docile in our marginalized spaces. Deep within the psyche remains an aversion to us—how dare the subaltern lead in “our” land! Yet, we do. These lived processes have created a different well-worn pathway.