Precarity and Agency through a Migration Lens

This special issue leverages the migrant experience to better understand precarity and agency in the contemporary world. By way of introduction, we examine the broader bodies of literature on precarity and agency, relate them to research on migration, and link them to the contributions in the special issue. Laying a foundation for further research, we illuminate three approaches to study the precarity-migration-agency nexus: an industry-specific approach, a sending country/deportee approach, and a collective action approach. We conclude with a critical analysis of freedom and national borders, considering the \u27open borders\u27 movement, postnational citizenship, and opposition to marketization

Politics of solidarity and agency in an age of precarity

Abstract: This article critically examines Guy Standing’s A Precariat Charter by posing three questions: 1) What is the significance of the North/South divide for the global spread of the precariat? 2) Is the precariat an agent of transformation, or simply a passive recipient? 3) How should we understand the fragmentation of the working class and its implications for progressive change? In addressing these questions, I argue that Standing’s analysis offers useful insights into the current era of insecurity. But it downplays important variations in forms of precarity, and also over‐emphasises fragmentation and weakness. The limits of this approach are illustrated through two empirical examples drawn from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Oakland, United States. Taken together, these examples point towards a broader and more fluid understanding of the “working class”. They also underscore possibilities for workingclass solidarity, both between stable workers and their more precarious counterparts, and between different groups that Standing identifies as the precariat

Towards a precarity agenda

Abstract: It is widely acknowledged that the closing decades of the twentieth century, and the early decades of the twenty‐first century, have been marked by growing economic insecurity across the globe. But how we understand this process is highly contested. What are the sources of economic insecurity? To what extent do contemporary forms of economic and political organisation mark a break from the past? What analytical tools do we need to make sense of the current moment? Are new concepts needed, or will well‐established concepts suffice? What are the implications of growing economic insecurity for questions of agency, solidarity, class struggle and social change? How does economic insecurity relate to various forms of collective organisation such as trade unions, political parties and community‐based organisations

International Migration in Macro-Perspective: Bringing Power Back In

This paper challenges the inward looking perspective of recent immigration research by situating migration to the United States within a global and historical context. This macro-stratification perspective breaks out of the confines of national contexts to explore how international migration is shaped by global power divides. We argue that in order to fully understand international migration, it is necessary to account for both the emergence of global power structures and the historical domination of Europe. We develop our argument by first outlining the significance of global power divides, with a particular focus on the United States. We then demonstrate how patterns of movement and incorporation are shaped by these power divides. This sheds new light on inequalities between native born and foreign born individuals in the United States. We conclude by highlighting the implications of the macro-stratification perspective for both future research and social change

The persistent protest cycle : A case study of contained political incorporation

Abstract: For more than a decade, widespread protests have erupted within South Africa’s impoverished black townships and informal settlements. The mobilizations resembled what Tarrow (2011) refers to as a “cycle of contention” or “protest cycle,” as they represented a diffusion of heightened conflict across society. In contrast to Tarrow’s protest cycle, however, resistance failed to converge around “objective coalitions” and a generalized challenge, and it persisted rather than reaching exhaustion. Drawing on a case study of protest and organizing in Bekkersdal, I argue that the fragmentation and localization of resistance reinforced this peculiar combination. Bekkersdal activists responded to democratization by seeking administrative fixes to local government. Political parties also pulled activists in different directions, yet without facilitating bridges to activism in other areas. While providing a highly visible example for activists in other areas to replicate, the Bekkersdal resistance thus failed to produce broader concessions that might have discouraged protests elsewhere. The case study shows how local containment of political incorporation processes may enable the persistence of protest cycles

Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

Social movements are full of contradictions, and an inherent tension often emerges between reformist and radical flanks. This becomes especially true as activists attempt to draw connections between varied aims such as opposition to globalization and support for immigrants. During the 1999 Battle of Seattle, the movement focused on opposing neoliberalism (Graeber 2002) and advocating for alternative visions of globalization (Reitan 2012). Some activists also noted the hypocrisy of opening borders to capital while militarizing the borders for migrants. Yet, in the end, immigrant rights movements and their central issues did not feature prominently in Seattle or later anti-globalization efforts. Simultaneously, however, most immigrant rights advocates have not prioritized opposition to the destructive power of global capitalism. In this paper, we consider the implication of this critical omission

Precarious Politics: Working Class Insecurity and Struggles for Recognition in the United States and South Africa, 1994-2010

The closing decades of the 20th century were devastating for the working class. Across the globe the widespread embrace of free markets led to growing capital mobility, flexible and informal employment, and union decline. A key result of these shifts was the expansion of the precarious working class: insecurely employed, low-income, and non-unionized segments of the urban working class. Scholars have increasingly highlighted this transformation, but they have paid little attention to collective struggles emerging from the precarious working class. Members of the precarious working class are instead commonly dismissed as too weak or fragmented to engage in politically relevant action. We thus know very little about their political orientation: what do members of the precarious working class struggle for, who do they struggle against, and from where do they derive power?This dissertation is a study of precarious politics, which refers to the political content of collective struggles by members of the precarious working class. The study focuses on two groups that were actively engaged in collective struggles during the late 1990s and 2000s: low-wage noncitizen workers in California, United States; and poor citizen communities in Gauteng, South Africa. The two groups shared a common structural position based on insecure employment and livelihood. But they also reflected the uneven development of the precarious working class across the world system. Low-wage noncitizen workers in California were prototypical of the precarious working class under advanced capitalism, which was increasingly organized around insecure formal sector employment and international migration. Poor citizen communities in Gauteng were, in contrast, prototypical of the precarious working class under peripheral capitalism, which was increasingly organized around high unemployment, informal economic activity, and "internal" rural-to-urban migration.In both cases precarious politics were rooted in demands for recognition, dignity, and respect. Given their marginalization, recognition was an important end in itself for members of the precarious working class. But it was also a source of symbolic leverage, enabling them to compensate for their detachment from unions and lack of economic leverage. Symbolic leverage was, in turn, crucial for achieving more concrete ends. Given the economic insecurity of the precarious working class, economic struggles for basic survival were central. But economic struggles in both places fed into and overlapped with citizenship struggles around official inclusion in the political community, broadening the terrain of precarious politics.Beyond this basic similarity, precarious politics in California and Gauteng were very different. Oriented towards participation, low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to increase their access and leverage within the economy and society. Their economic struggles were organized around an Equal Opportunity politics, which sought access to the labor market and basic labor protections, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Inclusion politics, which sought official legal status and freedom from criminalization. Oriented towards protection, poor citizen communities in Gauteng instead sought to protect themselves against the ravages of the market. Their economic struggles were organized around a Collective Consumption politics, which sought state delivery of basic public goods, while their citizenship struggles were organized around a Membership Exclusion politics, which sought the expulsion of noncitizen outsiders. Precarious politics in California and Gauteng thus ran in opposite directions as they moved from economic struggles to citizenship struggles. Whereas low-wage noncitizen workers in California sought to broaden the political community, poor citizen communities in Gauteng sought to contract it.Labor responses to precarious politics tended to reinforce the divergence. Understanding the struggles of low-wage noncitizen workers as crucial to their own revitalization, unions in California embraced precarious politics as part of a broader labor movement. This fusion affirmed the recognition of the precarious working class, reinforcing their struggles for participation. Focused on negotiating with the state and protecting their own privileges, unions in Gauteng treated precarious politics as separate from the labor movement. This separation isolated the precarious working class from broader struggles, reinforcing their struggles for protection.The concept of precarious politics provides a new lens for examining working class struggles in an age of marketization and insecurity. Using this lens, the two case studies show that a common precarious politics is emerging in very different parts of the globe, but that it takes very different forms depending on where the precarious working class is located within the world system

Capitalism and the Immigrant Rights Movement in the United States

[Exerpt] This article traces the contemporary United States immigrant rights movement from its origins in 1990s California through current resistance in the Trump era. In doing so, we adopt a Seattle+20 lens in order to situate struggles around migration in relation to global capitalism and the tensions highlighted above. Issues of organized labor and worker power feature prominently in our account. In the United States, migrants played a special role in reinvigorating workers’ movements plagued by decimation and bureaucratization (Lichtenstein 2002; Fantasia and Voss 2004). In a world where borders are increasingly irrelevant for elites and capital, and are ever more brutal for workers, labor movements – unionized and not – provide an important analytical lens for understanding the collective action of migrants. Given the growing centrality of migrants to contemporary global capitalism, immigrant rights movements also contain the possibility of challenging the status quo by subordinating the profit motive to the livelihood of all people, beyond borders, and by elevating democratic mechanisms over market mechanisms