Call for papers -
(Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo; 27 and 28 February 2014)
Neo-liberal globalisation and Europeanization have put national labour
movements under pressure. The increasing transnationalization of production
and centralisation of economic governance within multinational firms and
supranational organisations (EU, ECB, IMF, WTO) have put national trade
unions in competition with each other. And yet, workers are not without
weapons. Too often the structural constraints of the global economy are
emphasised, at the expense of potential agency of labour. These economic and
political integration processes have also provided new strategic
possibilities for trade unions. Key here is the way of how trade union
action at the local and national level may be connected across borders in
moments of transnational solidarity.
The purpose of the workshop is to analyse transnational labour action in
times of crisis, historically and now. ‘Labour’ includes trade unions but
also other, more informal forms of collective action by workers understood
in a broad sense. The overall ambition is to move beyond empirical
description of cases to a conceptually informed understanding of collective
action across borders.
In sum, the key innovative aspects of this international workshop are (1) a
focus on the theorisation of transnational action, and (2) an emphasis on
the new strategic possibilities of labour within the changing global
economy.
We invite papers in the following areas:
. What types of transnational labour solidarity can we observe in the
past and in what way may they be useful for progressive strategies in the
future?
. What factors have facilitated or hampered labour agency in the past
as well as in times of neo-liberal Europeanization and globalisation?
. What are the new ‘weapons’ of labour movements in our times of
transnational capitalism and are there experiences by labour movements in
the European and Global South, from which Northern trade unions could learn?
. How is labour agency conditioned by the current setting of
transnational capitalist social relations of production both within the
European Union and across the globe?
Confirmed speakers include Marcel van der Linden (International Institute
for Social History, NL), Eddie Webster (University of the Witwatersrand,
South Africa), Jane Hardy (University of Hertfordshire, UK) and Mark Anner
(Penn State, USA).
Paper proposals of ca. 250 words should be sent to roland.erne@cas.uio.no by
15 November 2013. Colleagues will be informed by mid-December on whether
their proposal has been accepted. There is no registration fee for the
workshop and all participants will be provided with coffee/tea breaks, two
lunches and one evening dinner free of charge.
Up to five workshop grants consisting of a travel subsidy plus accommodation
for three nights will be allocated on a competitive basis to the best paper
proposals by advanced Ph.D. students or early career postdocs.
A special journal issue and/or edited book will be published based on
contributions to this workshop.
The workshop is organized by the research group Globalization and the
possibility of transnational actors – The case of trade unions
(http://transnationallabour.wordpress.com/) and will be held at the Centre
for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science-and Letters in
Oslo/Norway.
This research group is led by Knut Kjeldstadli (University of Oslo) and
includes Ann Cecilie Bergene (Work Research Institute, Oslo); Andreas Bieler
(University of Nottingham); Roland Erne (University College Dublin); Darragh
Golden (University College Dublin); Idar Helle (Norwegian Union of General
Workers); and Sabina Stan (Dublin City University).
