From Disempowerment to Empowerment: The Case of Precarious Migrant Workers Organising in the Italian Logistics Sector

There is growing interest in understanding workers’ effective collective actions. When these actions are effective, we know that workers and trade unions secure material gains such as higher wages and better working conditions. Yet, although union-centred studies have long extended the analysis of economic gains to moral ones (e.g., Clegg, 1976), these studies overlook actors’ identities and, therefore, the various subjective gains that can contribute to making workers’ organising initiatives effective against different experiences of injustice and discrimination. More importantly, we know little about the implications of these subjective gains on workers’ organising initiatives. To address this gap, this article draws on long-standing multi-sited ethnographic research on precarious migrant workers mobilising with the support of SICobas, an Italian independent union. This research was conducted mainly in Bologna and Milan (Italy), involving participant observation at 124 events (e.g., union meetings, training, demonstrations, help desks, strikes, assemblies and social gatherings) and over 75 interviewees, such as migrant workers, union activists and allies. The article examines three subjective gains – changes in workers’ self-representation, a sense of belonging and political citizenship – that result from participatory organising. Following Collins (2000), the article argues that achieving material and subjective gains can be interpreted as empowerment, a process that transforms social institutions and produces emancipatory knowledge that has implications for migrant workers’ organising beyond workplace issues.