Immigrant and Migrant Workers Organizing in Canada and the United States

Casework and Campaigns in a Neoliberal Era

Jorge Frozzini and Alexandra Law

Across Canada and the United States, immigrant workers face important obstacles at work and in the broader society, whether their immigration status is temporary, permanent, or nonexistent. Hyper-precarious workers of all status groups, and their allies in unions and worker centers, are organizing to improve their conditions. In this book, Jorge Frozzini and Alexandra Law, two longtime volunteers with a Canadian worker center, draw on their own experience, in-depth interviews, and academic work from the fields of law, communication studies, and social movement theory, to produce a tactically focused, theoretically informed introduction to immigrant worker organizing in a neoliberal era. Frozzini and Law describe the phenomenon of employment precarity in the context of U.S. and Canadian labor history, explaining how union certification and collective bargaining function under the law. Without directing activists toward any single best strategy, they cover tactical and ethical questions raised when organizers offer casework as a recruitment and research tool. The royalties from this book will go to the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal.

Lexington Books

Pages: 172 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-1812-3 • Hardback • November 2017 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-1813-0 • eBook • November 2017 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, History / Canada / General, History / North America, Social Science / Emigration & Immigration, Social Science / Sociology of Work

Immigrant and Migrant Workers Organizing in Canada and the United States

Casework and Campaigns in a Neoliberal Era

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Across Canada and the United States, immigrant workers face important obstacles at work and in the broader society, whether their immigration status is temporary, permanent, or nonexistent. Hyper-precarious workers of all status groups, and their allies in unions and worker centers, are organizing to improve their conditions. In this book, Jorge Frozzini and Alexandra Law, two longtime volunteers with a Canadian worker center, draw on their own experience, in-depth interviews, and academic work from the fields of law, communication studies, and social movement theory, to produce a tactically focused, theoretically informed introduction to immigrant worker organizing in a neoliberal era. Frozzini and Law describe the phenomenon of employment precarity in the context of U.S. and Canadian labor history, explaining how union certification and collective bargaining function under the law. Without directing activists toward any single best strategy, they cover tactical and ethical questions raised when organizers offer casework as a recruitment and research tool. The royalties from this book will go to the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 172 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-1812-3 • Hardback • November 2017 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-1813-0 • eBook • November 2017 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural, History / Canada / General, History / North America, Social Science / Emigration & Immigration, Social Science / Sociology of Work

Author

Jorge Frozzini is professor in the Department of Arts and Letters at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi and researcher at the Laboratory for Research on Intercultural Relations.

Alexandra Law is teacher at Dawson College and member of theInter-University and Interdisciplinary Research Group of Employment, Poverty, and Social Protection (GIREPS).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Interdisciplinarity: On the Importance of Law, Communication Studies and
Chapter 2: (I)mmigrant Workers and the Union Movement: Legal and Historical
Chapter 3: Global Precarity
Chapter 4: Casework as an Organizing Tactic
Chapter 5: Campaigns and Strategies in the United States and Canada: Examples from the Literature

Reviews

Informed by their own experience of working with migrant and immigrant workers, Frozzini and Law make an insightful, interdisciplinary contribution to better understand labor and immigration precariousness in North America, while foregrounding today's struggles for justice and dignity waged by workers' centers and other (im)migrant organizations, innovative coalitions and campaigns.
— Aziz Choudry, McGill University

Immigrant and Migrant Workers Organizing in Canada and the United States comes as welcome relief in the context of persistent discourses that cast migrants and precarious workers as vaguely criminal and terminally helpless. As the book demonstrates, this cynical, ideological story does not come close to capturing the reality of how precarious migrant workers struggle against the economic and political structures that marginalize them and deny their hopes. Frozzini and Law provide a platform for these workers to express their experiences and aspirations in a manner that confirms their dignity and agency, complemented by the authors’ own frontline experience and critical insight. This is collaborative, activist scholarship at its very best.
— Darin Barney, McGill University

Alex Law and Jorge Frozzini offer us something very special in this book. They get into the nitty-gritty of neoliberal policies and of day-to-day worker organizing, yet we never lose sight of the beauty of human beings getting together to elevate their collective condition – in other words, the beauty of organizing! Written in a very accessible style, the book takes us through the history of union organizing in North America and gives us an overview of the reality of precarious work. It then turns to casework, organizing and advocacy taking place to defend (im)migrant workers’ rights and dignity. They ask hard questions, pointing out the successes and the limitations of (im)migrant worker organizing in the US and Canada. For students, academics or activists, this book is an engaging and thoughtful read.
— Jill Hanley, McGill School of Social Work