Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation (eBook)

ConnollyHeather: Heather Conolly is Associate Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Leicester. Her research explores the possibilities for trade union renewal, and how trade unions across Europe shape and are constrained by their institutional contexts. Her most recent research focuses on the innovative role that trade unions might play in the social inclusion of migrant workers.MarinoStefania: Stefania Marino is a Senior Lecturere in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and member of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research interests are in the field of labor sociology and industrial relations, with a particular focus on international and comparative analysis.Martínez LucioMiguel: Miguel Martínez Lucio is a Professor at the University of Manchester and involved in the Work and Equalities Institute. He researches on issues related to worker representation, the changing role of the state in labour relations, and social and organizational change in relation to work.

---

In The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation, Heather Connolly, Stefania Marino, and Miguel Martinez Lucio compare trade union responses to immigration and the related political and labour market developments in the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The labor movement is facing significant challenges as a result of such changes in the modern context. As such, the authors closely examine the idea of social inclusion and how trade unions are coping with and adapting to the need to support immigrant workers and develop various types of engagement and solidarity strategies in the European context.Traversing the dramatically shifting immigration patterns since the 1970s, during which emerged a major crisis of capitalism, the labor market, and society, and the contingent rise of anti-immigration sentiment and new forms of xenophobia, the authors assess and map how trade unions have to varying degrees understood and framed these issues and immigrant labor. They show how institutional traditions, and the ways that trade unions historically react to social inclusion and equality, have played a part in shaping the nature of current initiatives. The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation concludes that we need to appreciate the complexity of trade-union traditions, established paths to renewal, and competing trajectories of solidarity. While trade union organizations remain wedded to specific trajectories, trade union renewal remains an innovative, if at times, problematic and complex set of choices and aspirations.