With
precarious forms of work increasingly also emerging within the core of
industrialised countries in the global economy, the issue of how to organise
migrant workers has become an ever more pressing concern. In his talk at
Nottingham University on Tuesday, 17 October, Aziz Choudry reported on related
challenges, drawing on two of his recently co-edited books, Unfree
Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (Oakland,
CA: PM Press, 2016), together with Adrian Smith, and Just
Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today (London: Pluto Press, 2015),
together with Mondli Hlatshwayo. In this blog post, I will draw out a couple of
key insights resulting from Choudry’s analysis of a large range of different
forms of migrant labour organising.
Showing posts with label informal labour NGOs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label informal labour NGOs. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 October 2016
Monday, 29 August 2016
Chinese labour in the global economy: capitalist exploitation and strategies of resistance.
China is generally regarded as the new economic
powerhouse in the global political economy. Some even talk of an emerging
power, which may in time replace the US as the global economy’s hegemon. And
yet, there is a dark underside to this ‘miracle’ in the form of workers’ long
hours, low pay and lack of welfare benefits. Increasing levels of inequality
have gone hand in hand with widespread working conditions characterised by
super-exploitation. Nevertheless, Chinese workers have not simply accepted
these conditions of exploitation. They have started to fight back. In a new
special issue of the journal Globalizations, co-edited by Chun-Yi Lee
and myself, the contributors have analysed these various forms of resistance by
Chinese workers and the way they are organised. In this blog post, I will
provide a brief overview of the contents of this special issue.
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Super-exploitation and resistance: different forms of workers protests in China.
China is
frequently considered to be an example of successful developmental catch-up.
And yet, the country’s impressive growth rates are to a large extent based on
the super-exploitation of its workforce expressed in long working hours, low
wages, and a general lack of basic welfare benefits such as medical insurance
and work-injury insurance (Chan
and Selden, 2014, p. 606). In our recently published
article ‘Exploitation and resistance: a comparative analysis of the Chinese
cheap labour electronics and high-value added IT sectors’, published in the journal Globalizations and freely accessible online,
Chun-Yi Lee and I compare the electronics sector in the area of Shenzhen, based
on cheap labour assembling goods for export, with the IT
sector in the area of Shanghai, relying
on a more skilled workforce manufacturing high-value added goods. It is asked in what way these rather different
locations within the global political economy condition the form and contents
of resistance in these two sectors.
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