Short Abstract

This panel sponsored by the Anthropology of Labour Network and the journal Anthropology of Work Review will explore how different polarisations in the world today are both reconfiguring work and giving rise to new forms of resistance and solidarity.

Long Abstract

This panel sponsored by the Anthropology of Labour Network and the journal Anthropology of Work Review will explore how different polarisations in the world today are reconfiguring work and resistance. Labour conditions are increasingly impacted by authoritarian encroachments and the precaritization of work, which is both limiting possibilities for traditional labour unions but at the same time giving rise to reconfigured alliances and solidarities. Workers are also responding to polarisations over issues such as climate change, genocides, public health protections, and anti-immigration crackdowns and deportations with creative acts of resistance. This panel will engage with the following questions: What new forms of labour organising and unionising are emergent? Where unionised labour organising is no longer possible or effective, what new forms of solidarity and resistance need to be imagined/deployed? What is the role of labour in relation to macro-level issues such as climate change, armed conflicts, supply chains, trade policy, and pandemics?

We welcome papers that explore emergent and shifting forms of resistance and solidarity. Some recent examples include: Microsoft workers protesting tech for used by ICE or for genocide; Italian dockworkers refusing to allow ships with weapons to leave for Israel; migrant workers and their allies circumventing immigration officials/jamming hotlines; Amazon staff protesting low pay and climate impacts; Indian farmers protesting impossible conditions to sustain their livelihoods; Wayfair workers protesting the company’s contract with immigration detention centres. The Anthropology of Work Review would be happy to consider developing this panel into a Special Issue.

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