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The realities of globalization have produced a surprising reversal in the focus and strategies of labor movements around the world. After years of neglect and exclusion, labor organizers are recognizing both the needs and the importance of immigrants and women employed in the growing ranks of low-paid and insecure service jobs. In Organizing at the Margins, Jennifer Jihye Chun focuses on this shift as it takes place in two countries: South Korea and the United States. Using comparative historical inquiry and in-depth case studies, she shows how labor movements in countries with different histories and structures of economic development, class formation, and cultural politics embark on similar trajectories of change.
Chun shows that as the base of worker power shifts from those who hold high-paying, industrial jobs to the formerly “unorganizable,” labor movements in both countries are employing new strategies and vocabularies to challenge the assault of neoliberal globalization on workers' rights and livelihoods. Deftly combining theory and ethnography, she argues that by cultivating alternative sources of “symbolic leverage” that root workers' demands in the collective morality of broad-based communities, as opposed to the narrow confines of workplace disputes, workers in the lowest tiers are transforming the power relations that sustain downgraded forms of work. Her case studies of janitors and personal service workers in the United States and South Korea offer a surprising comparison between converging labor movements in two very different countries as they refashion their relation to historically disadvantaged sectors of the workforce and expand the moral and material boundaries of union membership in a globalizing world.
Reviews
"Combining original theoretical insights and rigorous comparisons, Jennifer Jihye Chun takes us to the crucible of contemporary labor movements in the United States and South Korea and showcases the unexpected political and symbolic leverages wielded by some of the most marginalized, low-paid service workers. A beacon of hope for labor movements worldwide and a remarkable scholarly achievement, this book is a must-read for sociologists, activists, and the concerned public."—Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA
"Organizing at the Margins is an excellent contribution to our understanding of global labor movements. Jennifer Jihye Chun combines careful ethnographic case studies of recent union campaigns among low-wage service workers in the United States and South Korea with nuanced theoretical discussion to develop a provocative and highly original perspective on labor organizing in the neoliberal era."—Ruth Milkman, UCLA, author of L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement
"In this age of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of labor activism among the most vulnerable workers in the service sector is a very interesting phenomenon. The United States and South Korea may appear to be an unlikely pair for a comparative analysis of how labor activists effect change, but Organizing at the Margins demonstrates how their respective tactics converge. In both countries, some of the weakest and most marginalized members of the labor force have been successful in organizing unions and obtaining just treatment from their employers and the state."—Hagen Koo, University of Hawai'i, Manoa, author of Korean Workers
About the Author
Jennifer Jihye Chun is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.
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