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Mobilization of Subalterns and Recomposition of Workers' Movements
Mobilization of Subalterns and Recomposition of Workers' Movements
Abstract Submissions Closed
Friday, 26 February 2021: 14:15-15:45
Location:
RC44 Labor Movements (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
Over the past thirty years, we have witnessed an intensification of social conflicts (Silver and Karatasli, 2015), which is striking because it stems in particular from the mobilization of subaltern workers. They occupy economic positions on the margins of the traditional labour movements, but are at the same time at the heart of multiple power relations in terms of class, gender, race and citizenship status. Why do these populations sometimes claim to be identified as workers, with demands that transcend the usual divisions between productive and reproductive work (Chun and Agarwala, 2016) ? And why at other times do they privilege other belonging, to the point of supporting components of civil society that favour the coming to power of extreme right-wing governments like Brazil? Are the same populations in these opposing trajectories? In this period of rising extremes, similar to the 1930s, it seems important to deconstruct both the belief that equates precariousness with a dangerous class (Standing, 2011) and the belief that these social eruptions are the rise of new post-materialistic subjectivities (Hardt and Negri, 2012), forgetting in both cases that workers in the Global South have always had to negotiate with precariousness (Scully, 2016; van der Linden, 2016). This is why this panel invites papers that focus on the trajectories of these social conflicts, and examine the role played by the various components of civil society involved, or study the forms of interaction and organization developed with these subaltern populations, particularly during social upheavals or countermovements to commodification.
Session Organizers: