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Contested Accommodation on the Meso Level

Discursive Adaptation Within Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Services

University of California-Santa Barbara

Religious nonprofits operate within a complex organizational environment, responding to the demands of multiple and competing constituencies. Typologies gauging the degree of religiosity of a particular organization must, therefore, be preceded by an examination of discursive adaptations made by organizational actors responding to conflicting priorities. Such a need prompted this ethnographic exploration of one agency’s (the Los Angeles Catholic Charities’ Immigration and Refugee Services) attempt to preserve the integrity of the religious act while remaining true to legal standards and a pluralistic context of service. Interviews and participant observation suggest that discourses of service are ambiguous, contested, and variable along organizational levels. Findings demonstrate how competing authorities compel organizations to develop an adaptive discourse satisfying both religious and secular demands, exemplary of contested accommodation on the meso level. This draws attention to the need for a new language to comprehend the organizational dynamics of religious nonprofits working within nonreligious functional domains.

Key Words: religious nonprofits • contested accommodation • Catholic Charities • immigration • discourse

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