The Internationalisation of the Labour Question

The Internationalisation of the Labour Question
Author: Stefano Bellucci
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2019-11-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 303028235X

This edited collection is a global history of workers’ organisations since 1919, the year when the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Comintern and the International Federation of Trade Unions were formed. This historical moment represents a caesura in labour history as it epitomises the beginning of what the editors and the contributors in this book call the internationalisation of the labour question. The case studies in this centenary volume analyse the relationship between global workers’ organisations and the new ideological confrontation between liberal capitalism, socialism and communism since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Workers’ organisations, trade unions in particular, grew in importance and managed to organise internationally, forming alliances cemented by ideology and sustained by international institutional bodies or centrals. In the nascent capitalist versus communist struggle, trade unions thrived. Is it mere coincidence that today’s decline of unionism coincides with the end of ideological antagonism? This book emphasises important global labour issues such as gender as well as international workers’ histories from Latin America, Asia and Africa.

The Internationalisation of the ‘Native Labour' Question in Portuguese Late Colonialism, 1945–1962

The Internationalisation of the ‘Native Labour' Question in Portuguese Late Colonialism, 1945–1962
Author: José Pedro Monteiro
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 3031051408

This volume addresses the ways the ‘native labour’ question in the Portuguese late colonial empire in Africa became a recurrent topic of international and transnational debate and regulation after the Second World War. As other European colonial empires were tentatively transforming their labour and social policies in the aftermath of the war, the Portuguese Empire in Africa resisted significant changes in this domain, preserving a strict dual labour regime. As a result, a growing number of individuals, networks and institutions abroad engaged with labour and social realities in Portuguese African colonies, giving origin to a series of instances of denunciation of labour-related abuses. Portuguese authorities responded to these initiatives by selectively engaging with international norms, languages and mechanisms. However, as global decolonisation gained momentum, international and transnational events and processes would significantly constrain Portuguese imperial and colonial decision-making procedures, with the aim of retaining the empire. Therefore, the ‘native labour’ question became in its own right a crucial political and diplomatic element of the broader struggles over the meaning of Portuguese imperial legitimacy. As this volume argues, these historical processes are critical to properly understanding the history of Portuguese late colonialism and its protracted trajectory of decolonisation.

Labour Questions in the Global South

Labour Questions in the Global South
Author: Praveen Jha
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2021-02-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9813346353

This book provides a focus on some of the main markers and challenges that are at the core of the study of structural transformations in contemporary capitalism and their implications for labour in the Global South. It examines the diverse perspectives and regional and social variations that characterise labour relations as a result of the uneven development which is an important facet of the intensification of capitalist accumulation.. The book provides important insights into the impact of the crises of capitalism on the wellbeing of labour at different historical junctures. Some of the issues covered by it include the conditions of work, and the changing composition of laboring classes and/or working people. The chapters also throw light on the multiple trajectories in the development of labour relations and employment in the Global South, especially after the ascendancy and domination of neoliberal finance capitalism. Some of the major aspects considered by the essays include the decentering of production and development of global value systems, crisis of social reproduction, and the rising informalisation of work.

Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work

Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work
Author: Maurizio Atzeni
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 709
Release: 2023-10-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1839106581

This ground-breaking Handbook broadens empirical and theoretical understandings of work, work relations, and workers. It advances a global, intersectional labour studies agenda, laying the foundations for the politically emancipatory project of decolonising the political economy of work.

A Global Radical Waterfront

A Global Radical Waterfront
Author: Holger Weiss
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 523
Release: 2021-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004463283

This volume investigates the ambition of the Red International of Labour Unions to radicalize the global waterfront during the interwar period. The main vehicle was the International Propaganda Committee of Transport Workers, replaced in 1930 by the International of Seamen and Harbour Workers as well as their agitation and propaganda centres, the International Harbour Bureaus and the International Seamen’s Clubs. The book scrutinizes their solidarity campaigns in support of local and national strikes as well as on their agitation against discrimination, segregation and racism within the unions, their demands to organize non-white maritime transport workers, and their calls for engagement in anti-fascist, anti-war and anti-imperialist actions.

The Global Challenge of Peace

The Global Challenge of Peace
Author: Matt Perry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800857195

This book scrutinizes the events of 1919 from below: the global underside of the Wilsonian moment. During 1919 the Great Powers redrew the map of the world with the Treaties of Paris and established the League of Nations intending to prevent future war. Yet what is often missed is that 1919 was a complex threshold between war and peace contested on a global scale. This process began prior to war's end with mutinies, labour and consumer unrest, colonial revolt but reached a high point in 1919. Most obviously, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 continued into 1919 which signalled a decisive year for the Bolshevik regime. While the leaders of the Great Powers famously drew up new states in their Parisian hotel rooms, state formation also had a popular dynamic. The Irish Republic was declared. Afghanistan gained independence. Labour unrest was widespread. This year witnessed the emergence of anti-colonial insurgency and movements across Europe's colonies; in metropolitan centres of Empire, race riots took place in the UK and during the 'red summer' in the US, anti-colonial movements, as well as an important moment of political enfranchisement for women but their expulsion from the wartime labour force. 1919 has many legacies: the first Arab spring, with the awakening of nationalism in the Wilsonian and Bolshevik context; the moment (as a consequence of Jallianwala Bagh) that Britain definitively lost its moral claim to India; the definitive announcement of Black presence in the UK; the great reversal of women's participation in the skilled occupations; the first Fascist movement was founded.

The Sage Handbook of Global Sociology

The Sage Handbook of Global Sociology
Author: Gurminder K. Bhambra
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
Total Pages: 739
Release: 2023-11-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1529614910

The SAGE Handbook of Global Sociology addresses the ‘social’, its various expressions globally, and the ways in which such understandings enable us to understand and account for global structures and processes. It demonstrates the vitality of thought from around the world by connecting theories and traditions, including reflections on European colonization, to build shared, rather than universal, understandings. Across 36 chapters, the Handbook offers a series of perspectives and cases from different locations, enabling the reader better to understand the particularities of specific contexts and how they are connected to global movements and structures. By moving beyond standard accounts of sociology and social theory, this Handbook offers both valuable insight into and scholarly contribution to the field of global sociology. Part 1: Politics Part 2: Labour Part 3: Kinship Part 4: Belief Part 5: Technology Part 6: Ecology

Extractivism and Labour in the Caribbean

Extractivism and Labour in the Caribbean
Author: Dennis C. Canterbury
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2023-12-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1003815960

This book explores the impact of resource extraction and the dynamics of great powers competing for natural resources in the Caribbean. The book analyzes labour–capital relations between China, the United States, the European Union, and Russia in the Caribbean, as competition increases with the arrival of non-traditional sources of foreign investments in infrastructure from the East. Chapters assess these dynamics through varying historical and current forms of worker, community, and organization resistance in the Caribbean’s extractive industries from the 1970s to the present. In doing so, the book critically analyzes the interplay of extractive capital with labour unions, community organizations, management, and the state, particularly regarding the struggle for higher wages, improved working conditions, and the broader issues of extractive capitalism and underdevelopment, dispossession, social exclusion, and environmental degradation. The first book on Extractivism and Labour in the Caribbean and a major contribution to critical development studies literature, it will appeal to policymakers as well as students and scholars in the fields of development studies, development economics, sociology, politics, and international relations.

Renewing International Labour Studies

Renewing International Labour Studies
Author: Marcus Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131798613X

This volume seeks to re-energise the paradigm of the New International Labour Studies by detailing how struggles over the construction, reproduction, utilisation and restructuring of labour forces are the contested social foundations upon which the global economy stands. Through a combination of theoretical works and a series of case studies, the volume highlights the cutting edge of international labour studies. Its expands on three pivotal areas of study within the discipline:1) the social construction of new labour forces across an expanding international division of labour; 2) the self-organising potential of workers, particularly within non-traditional sectors; and 3) the possibilities for transborder labour movements to help address the asymmetrical power relationships between globalised capital and localised labour. In addressing these themes, the volume helps explain not only how the contemporary international division of labour is produced and reproduced, but also the strengths and limits to current attempts to overcome its unequal and divisive nature. This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.