Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today, Ed. by Aziz Choudry and Mondli Hlatshwayo, ISBN: 9780745335834
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12454 |
| Author | Katarina Hollan |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12454
57:1 March 2019 0007–1080 pp. 205–207
BOOK REVIEW
Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today, Ed. by Aziz Choudry and
Mondli Hlatshwayo,ISBN: 9780745335834
Jus t Work ? Mig ran t Work ers ’Struggles Today is a timely international collection
of essays that presents migrant workers’ success stories and struggles in labour
organising. Set against the background of the plethora of diculties and challenges
migrant workers face in the global capitalist economy, this book places strategies of
resistance against exploitation of migrant workers from around the globe atthe centre
of attention. Edited by Aziz Choudry and Mondli Hlatshwayo, both activists and
scholars on social movements, trade unions and migrant workers, this volume links
academic thought with chapters from the activist front targeting migrant workers’
social justice. It is a much needed contribution,given the surge in global developments
of capitalist restructuring, which draw heavily on the exploitation of migrant labour.
Most importantly, this book sets out and succeeds to move beyond victimization and
focuses on agency of migrant workers around the world.
Current contributions to the literature on labourmarket segmentation and migrant
labour focuson the role of immigration regimes and economic disparities in producing
precarious migrant workers, or often even ‘illegal’ migrants (e.g.Anderson 2010; Vosko
2010). This is where the introductory chapter of this book departs from. With great
poignancy it outlines the mechanisms how employers’ demand forflexible and ‘cheap’
labour togetherwith immigration controls position migrant workers at the bottom end
of labour markets. What follows is a zooming in on 11 labour organising experiences
of migrant workers’ movements whereby this book provides an extensive illustration
of how migrant workeragency can be conceptualized.
The geographic grouping of the 11 country-specific chapters into four parts gives
the impression of a trip around the world, visiting first migrant workers’ labour
organising contexts in Africa and the Middle East, moving from Europe to Asia
and the Pacific and arriving in North America. At first, this grouping suggests a
comparative lens.However, a comparativeanalysis is not the aim of this book. Instead
of contrasting dierent country-specific struggles, this collection is a documentation
of new approaches and methods of union and community responses to labour issues
of migrant workers, which have been tried and tested. It is greatly revealing to see
in what contexts migrant workers currently organise, often, however, with limited
eect.
Each case is embedded in a detailed description of the migration patterns in the
given region or country. This allows to ask questions about parallels between dierent
contexts, such as the multi-layered politics of migration in Nigeria given its shifting
C
2019 The Authors British Journalof Industrial Relations Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Thisis an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the
use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptationsare made.
To continue reading
Request your trial