Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Thursday 25 March 2021 14.30 - 15.45
L-7 LAB27 Work and the Politics of Skills, Migration and Technology
L
Networks: Science & Technology , Labour Chair: Peyman Jafari
Organizers: - Discussants: -
Patrícia Bosenbecker : Entrepreneurs and Farmers in the Process of Private Colonization in Brazil (1850-1914)
From the middle of the nineteenth century until the early twentieth century, the immigration / colonization process with European immigrants that developed in Brazil had three forms: the first originated from a colonizing policy fomented by the National State, the second, promoted by the private sector, and the third, produced ... (Show more)
From the middle of the nineteenth century until the early twentieth century, the immigration / colonization process with European immigrants that developed in Brazil had three forms: the first originated from a colonizing policy fomented by the National State, the second, promoted by the private sector, and the third, produced by what we might call spontaneous immigration - here understood by the arrival in the country of immigrants who had not been run by the state or by private groups, that is, those immigrants who came on their own. If, on the one hand, the Brazilian State produced a targeted colonization, on the other hand, several entrepreneurs invested in the process of recruiting, transporting and setting up large migrant contingents, of various nationalities and ethnic groups, especially in the southern states of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, but also in the southeast, mainly in São Paulo.
This process was fostered by the Land Law of 1850, which shaped private colonization especially in the southern Brazilian region, establishing immigrants in agricultural settlements as small landowners. In Sao Paulo, the scenario changed to a certain extent, since most of the immigrants in this process had to settle on farms as rural workers, even though many of these immigrants wanted to become landowners at some later time. Throughout this immigration process, recruitment, conduction and installation of the migrants were stages that demanded great organization of the Brazilian government and also of private companies. In these stages (recruitment, conduction and installation of migrants), several specialized professionals, agents or recruiters, specialized in hiring immigrants, always with great advertising, part produced by the Brazilian State, and reproduced in Europe with the intention of attract specific groups of migrants, in the process we will call “engagement of immigrant”.
These entrepreneurs of foreign or Brazilian origin, who specialized in hiring and transporting immigrants, became what we will call entrepreneurs in the immigration sector and contributed significantly to the development of various sectors of the Brazilian national economy, as well as profiting from their own interests and enterprises, colonies or factories, and has a role that has not yet been discussed in the history of the immigration of Europeans to Brazil. In a research project developed at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), in São Paulo, which seeks to understand the role of these entrepreneurs of the immigration sector in Brazilian history, we propose to investigate the profile, fields of action and main configurations of these individuals, in economic terms, as well as its scope and socio-political influence at the national level. Thus, we intend to present in this work some of the research results, especially regarding the profile of private sector entrepreneurs of immigration / colonization. (Show less)

Karin Astrid Siegmann, Giulio Iocco : How Workers drive Civic Innovation
Historically, workers’ struggles have improved labour conditions at the workplace, challenged workers’ broader subordination in the labour process and have shaped State policies and legislation that protect workers’ rights. Informed by Katz’s (2004) conceptualisation of resistance, we analyse recent examples of such struggles that challenge workers’ precarity in agro-food chains. ... (Show more)
Historically, workers’ struggles have improved labour conditions at the workplace, challenged workers’ broader subordination in the labour process and have shaped State policies and legislation that protect workers’ rights. Informed by Katz’s (2004) conceptualisation of resistance, we analyse recent examples of such struggles that challenge workers’ precarity in agro-food chains. Katz (2004) seeks to develop a nuanced understanding of practices that “[…] respond effectively to the massive disruptions in productions of space, nature and social life that pierce people’s everyday lives in the course of capitalist development” (Katz 2004: 242). Specifically, we ask how workers’ resistance arises. We enrich Katz’s (2004) framework with insights of the power resources approach initially formulated by Wright (2000) and Fraser’s (2010) notion of citizenship in transnational political spheres.

The experience of worker representatives involved in different forms of resistance constitutes the empirical core our analysis. Positioning ourselves in a tradition of activist scholarship in labour studies, we compare the Florida-based migrant farmworker organisation Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW’s) effort to re-negotiate the terms of workers’ inclusion in the capitalist labour process (Siegmann et al. 2016) with the rural cross-class association SOS Rosarno that unites migrant farmworkers and small farmers’ in Southern Italy’s citrus and olive cultivation as an alternative economic model from below (Iocco and Siegmann 2017).

Based on our comparative analysis, we argue that, beyond workers’ economic roles, resistance needs to be understood as moves towards fuller citizenship. The analysis also highlights how different forms of resistance connect to and build on each other. Workers’ associational power plays a foundational role here, catalysing the critical consciousness necessary to understand and address structures that marginalise workers. The collaboration with allies able to intervene in spaces other than the workplace reduces workers’ vulnerability. This use of ‘coalitional power’ (Brookes 2013) re-establishes the citizenship of both workers and consumers. Last but not least, we bring out the ambiguous role of frames that are shared among diverse members of workers’ coalitions: While unifying frames - or what Chun (2009) terms ‘symbolic power’ – enables the forging of alliances, they may simultaneously involve the risk of reproducing, e.g. racial and gendered, social hierarchies that marginalise workers.

References
Brookes, M. (2013) 'Varieties of Power in Transnational Labor Alliances: An Analysis of Workers’ Structural, Institutional, and Coalitional Power in the Global Economy', Labor Studies Journal 38(3): 181-200.
Chun, J.J. (2009) Organizing at the Margins. The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
Fraser, N. (2010) 'Who Counts? Dilemmas of Justice in a Postwestphalian World', Antipode 41: 281-297.
Iocco, G. and K.A. Siegmann (2017) ‘A Worker-driven Way out of the Crisis in Mediterranean Agriculture’. Global Labour Column 289. Johannesburg: Global Labour University.
Katz, C. (2004) Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children's Everyday Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Siegmann, K.A., Knorringa, P. and Merk, J. (2016) ‘Civic Innovation in Value Chains: Towards Workers as Agents in Non-governmental Labour Regulation’, in K. Biekart, W. Harcourt and P. Knorringa (eds) Exploring Civic Innovation for Social and Economic Transformation. London: Routledge.
Wright, E.O. (2000) 'Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise', American Journal of Sociology 105(4): 957-1002. (Show less)



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