Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions

This article develops an embedded actor‐centred framework for studying the mobilization and bargaining practices of migrant workers. This framework is applied to examine two instances of labour organizing by low‐paid Latin American workers in London showing how migrant workers can develop innovative...

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Main Authors: Alberti, Gabriella, Però, Davide
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2018
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/
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author Alberti, Gabriella
Però, Davide
author_facet Alberti, Gabriella
Però, Davide
author_sort Alberti, Gabriella
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description This article develops an embedded actor‐centred framework for studying the mobilization and bargaining practices of migrant workers. This framework is applied to examine two instances of labour organizing by low‐paid Latin American workers in London showing how migrant workers can develop innovative collective initiatives located at the junction of class and ethnicity that can be effective and rewarding in material and non‐material terms. In particular, the article shows that while there is a growing interest on the part of established unions to represent migrant workers, their bargaining and mobilization strategies appear inadequate to accommodate the bottom‐up initiatives of such workers who, as a result, have started to articulate them independently. On the basis of the findings obtained, we thus argue in favour of an actor‐centred framework to the study of migration and IR to better identify migrant workers’ interests, identities and practices as shaped by complex regulatory and social context.
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spelling nottingham-515252020-04-10T04:30:10Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/ Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions Alberti, Gabriella Però, Davide This article develops an embedded actor‐centred framework for studying the mobilization and bargaining practices of migrant workers. This framework is applied to examine two instances of labour organizing by low‐paid Latin American workers in London showing how migrant workers can develop innovative collective initiatives located at the junction of class and ethnicity that can be effective and rewarding in material and non‐material terms. In particular, the article shows that while there is a growing interest on the part of established unions to represent migrant workers, their bargaining and mobilization strategies appear inadequate to accommodate the bottom‐up initiatives of such workers who, as a result, have started to articulate them independently. On the basis of the findings obtained, we thus argue in favour of an actor‐centred framework to the study of migration and IR to better identify migrant workers’ interests, identities and practices as shaped by complex regulatory and social context. Wiley 2018-04-10 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/1/14478.pdf Alberti, Gabriella and Però, Davide (2018) Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions. British Journal of Industrial Relations . ISSN 0007-1080 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/bjir.12308 doi:10.1111/bjir.12308 doi:10.1111/bjir.12308
spellingShingle Alberti, Gabriella
Però, Davide
Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title_full Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title_fullStr Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title_full_unstemmed Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title_short Migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
title_sort migrating industrial relations: migrant workers’ initiative within and outside trade unions
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51525/