- 14–18 juillet 2020
- Porto Alegre (Brésil)
Présentation
Recent economic development have witnessed several structural changes : on the one hand, the outflows of capital have created a regional value chain between countries or regions (e.g. Japanese and Korean investments in South East Asia, transnational factories at the mexican-USA borders, free-trade zones in Middle East). On the other hand, the inflows of migrant workers from to wealthier countries (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. in Asia ; South-Africa for some frontier-countries like Zimbabwe or Mozambic ; Argentina for Paraguay and Bolivia, etc.) have created racial and ethnic division of work in low-paid sectors (labor-intensive industries and care work, etc.) and challenged the capacity of social inclusion in these countries. In such contexts, the power asymmetry between employer and employees is reinforced by other forms of domination and subordination : race, ethnicity, gender…
This panel therefore seeks to focus on workers’ organizing strategies in the value chains. Especially, newly-industrialized countries or countries where the trade union movement is weaker than in other old industrial countries, seem very interesting cases.
We welcome papers that discuss the following questions
- Under the context of weak trade union movement and increased power asymmetry between workers and employers, what are the new forms, actors and networks of organizing ?
- What are the roles of trade unions, NGOs and other social actors in organizing or supporting migrant workers ?
- What are the relations between workplace organizing and other issues of social justice (community organizing, cultural recognition, environmental justice, etc.).
Papers drawing on comparative studies will be especially appreciated.
Session organizers
Ya-Han CHUANG, INED (Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques), France, yahanduken@gmail.com,
Delphine MERCIER, CNRS – LEST-UMR 7317, France, delphine.mercier@univ-amu.fr
Chris CHAN, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, sskcchan@gmail.com