Global Perspectives on Workers' and Labour Organizations

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Life Reproduction in Urban Spaces

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Rethinking Labor Unionism in Spaces of Precarious Work

      • Ian Thomas MacDonald

      Pages 3-22

   3. Organizing Immigrant Workers Through ‘Communities of Coping’: An Analysis of Migrant Domestic Workers’ Journey from an Individual Labour of Love to a Collective Labour with Rights

      • Joyce Jiang

      Pages 23-42

   4. Mobilizing Concealment and Spectacle Among Uruguay’s Waste-Pickers

      • P. O’Hare

      Pages 43-62

   5. Local Sweatshops in the Global Economy: Accumulation Dynamics and the Manufacturing of a Reserve Army

      • Jerónimo Montero Bressán

      Pages 63-84

   6. Labour Politics and South African Retail Workers: Enduring Collectivities in the Face of Precariousness

      • Bridget Kenny

      Pages 85-104

3. Value Production in Industries

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105

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   2. The Collective Resistance of China’s Industrial Workers

      • Jenny Chan

      Pages 107-125

   3. “We Fight Against the Union!”: An Ethnography of Labor Relations in the Automotive Industry in Mexico

      • Paolo Marinaro

      Pages 127-140

   4. Organizing Informal Female Workers in India: Experiences from the Construction Industry of Mumbai

      • Kadambari Chheda, Anuradha Patnaik

      Pages 141-156

   5. Digital Labour and Workers’ Organisation

      • Jamie Woodcock

      Pages 157-173

This book broadens the research on the underworld of precarious and not-represented workers, through a selection of original case studies from across the globe written by leading experts. The book unveils the working conditions affecting this vast labour force that is so important to capital accumulation in the global age. It also helps us to understand the forms and processes of organization that these groups of workers, almost on an everyday basis, put in place to improve their working conditions and lived experiences.

• global labor
• neoliberal capitalism
• precariat
• precarious sector
• social reproduction
• labor relations
• collective organization
• collective bargaining
• trade union
• industrial relations
• crowd workers
• outsourcing
• migrant workers
• forced labor
• working class mobilization
• global south
• guest workers
• precarious work
• domestic workers
• female workers

“The main theme of this edited volume is precariousness, explored through the perspectives of workers in localities of the Global South and North. … this volume is a noteworthy addition to a body a literature that conducts academic research ‘from below’. Its most valuable asset is the great detail and depth that most case studies provide.” (George Tsogas, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 57 (1), March, 2019)​

• Centre for research on labour relations, CEIL/CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

  Maurizio Atzeni

• Brooklyn College, City University of New York, Brooklyn, USA

  Immanuel Ness

Maurizio Atzeni is a researcher at the Centre for Labour Relations/Argentinian National Research Council based in Buenos Aires, having previously held positions at Loughborough and De Montfort Universities in the UK. He has published extensively on labour-related issues and is currently on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society and of Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society.

Immanuel Ness is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Social Change. His research focuses on working class mobilization, global south workers, migration, resistance and social movements. He is general editor with Peter Bellwood of The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, and is also editor of Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society.   

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