Welcome to the Migration Seminar!

PhD final seminar: Contradictions of Migrant Labour: Strategies and Social Reproduction in Danish Trade Unionism

Profile: Karen Ravn Vestergaard, PhD Student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER), Malmö University

Principal supervisor: Maja Povrzanović Frykman, Professor, Malmö University
Assistant supervisors: Nahikari Irastorza Arandia, Associate Professor, University of Deusto
Paula Mulinari, Associate Professor, Malmö University

External reader: Karin Krifors, Associate Professor, Linköping University
Internal reader: Mikael Spång, Professor, Malmö University

Abstract:

The Danish trade union movement has throughout its history been confronted with forms of migrant labour, specifically on its national form and on questions regarding entitlement to the rights secured through organised labour. This PhD dissertation applies a social reproduction analysis to the implications of this tension by attending to the forms of labour and worker subjects that are (un)recognised in trade union organising. It examines the Danish union federation 3F’s perception of challenges, and the strategies employed concerning instances of (racialised and gendered) labour differentiation, specifically regarding precarious and migrant labour in the construction and cleaning sectors and in their international union engagement across the Global South. It combines insights from critical labour and critical migration studies to account for the multiscalar social relations of Danish trade unionism that include (and exceed) the relationship between organised labour, organised capital, and the state within the Danish (or Nordic) model of industrial relations. The analysis specifically attends to the historical centring of the white, male industrial worker and the simultaneous marginalisation of precarious, feminised, and racialised forms of labour(ers).

Based on historical analysis combined with semi-structured interviews with union staff, activists, and partners, the dissertation argues (among other aspects) that ongoing strategic work around precarious and migrant labour reveals social reproductive struggles as a central tension to questions of labour organising. This contradicts current ideological separations where social reproductive politics (i.e. welfare) largely are delegated to the state and treated as ‘non-economic’ and, thus, as outside 'trade union' domain. Migrant labour, thereby, contradicts its own marginalisation by exemplifying how precariousness is (re)produced by intersecting restrictive migration regimes, social reproduction politics, and national-protectionist internationalist engagement. As such, it exposes the need for expanding and diversifying trade union politics of labour; a need increasingly identified by local, alternative organising efforts.

Short bio

Karen is a PhD Candidate in International Migration & Ethnic Relations (IMER) at Malmö University. She holds a BA in Anthropology (University of Copenhagen) and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies (American University of Beirut). Her research interests include labour and migration regimes, social reproduction, and forms of political organising. She has researched the intersection of these themes in the context of Lebanon and Denmark.

Attendance

This is a hybrid seminar, you are welcome to connect via Zoom or join us at MIM seminar room, floor 9. To attend on campus, please gather by the reception area at 13.05. Zoom link will be available closer to the seminar date. If you have any questions, send an email to mim@mau.se.

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