Transnational Activism, Global Labor Governance, and China

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-349-95021-8
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Buch, Englisch, 286 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 4905 g

Reihe: Non-Governmental Public Action

This book explores rising labor unrest in China as it integrates into the global political economy. The book highlights the tensions present between China’s efforts to internationalize and accept claims to respect freedom of association rights, and its continuing insistence on a restrictive, and often punitive, approach to worker organizations. The author examines how the global labor movement can support the improvement of working conditions in Chinese factories. The book presents a novel multi-level approach capturing how trade unions and labor rights NGOs have mobilized along different pathways while attempting to influence labor standards in Chinese supply chains since 1989: within the ILO, within the European Union, leveraging global brands or directly supporting domestic labor rights NGOs. Based on extensive fieldwork in Europe, the US and China, the book shows that activists, by operating at multiple scales, were on some occasions able to support improvements over time. It also indicates how a politically and economically strong state such as China can affect transnational labor activism, by directly and indirectly undermining the opportunities that organized civil societies have to participate in the evolving global labor governance architecture. 

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Zajak, Sabrina

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Volkswirtschaften einzelner Länder und Regionen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Beschäftigung, Arbeitslosigkeit
• Rechtswissenschaften Arbeitsrecht
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Globalisierung
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Arbeitsmarkt
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction: Multilevel labor activism, transnational institutions, and China.- 2. Defining the shadow of the dragon: China’s internal and external strength.- 3. The international-organizational pathway: The case of the ILO.- 4. The bilateral pathway: The European Union and China.- 5. The market pathway.- 6. The civil society pathway.- 7. Conclusion: Labor transnationalism in global markets and plural institutional settings.

Über Autor(innen)

Sabrina Zajak is Junior Professor of Globalization Conflicts, Social Movements, and Labor at the Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. She is Founding Member of the Institute for Protest ad Social Movement Research in Berlin and Head of the research group "Transnational Alliances between Social Movements and Trade Unions in Europe". Her other research focuses on protests in Germany and pathways of labor rights activism between Asia and Europe in a comparative perspective.