541
Labour Movements in the Era of Authoritarian Populism
Abstract Submissions Closed
RC44 Labor Movements (host committee)
Language: English
Session Type: Oral
There is no shortage of evidence that far-right populism is a growing and global political force. Right wing populist parties are making significant political gains on the back of street movements that feed on austerity and scapegoating. In a political climate that dehumanises migration from the Global South, governments in the Global North are creating “hostile environments” for refugees while strengthening exclusionary and chauvinistic policies. More established authoritarian regimes in the South have not hesitated to deploy nationalist-populist rhetoric that escalates ethnic and religious tensions and justifies increased state capacities for repression.
Little has been written on how labour movements have fared under these new conditions. Organised labour has suffered a consistent undermining of its institutional presence and influence since the neoliberal turn of the 1970s. Global production networks and technological changes have resulted in new labor processes and forms of employment that are changing work in fundamental ways. These have certainly generated new ways of collective organising and struggle especially in the Global South. But both “old” and “new” movements are faced with threats from far-right movements – sometimes in the name of the working class – and authoritarian policies that pander to usually racist populist ideas.
This panel calls for papers that focus on labour-orientated struggles and movements that contend with authoritarian populist environments at all levels. We welcome papers with a single-country focus from both the Global North and South but particularly encourage comparative studies.