Laboring against Liberalization in North America: Emerging Coalitions between U.S. and Mexican Unions

Bowdoin College, Brunswick ME

Investigators

Abstract

The process of global economic change has required that social movements concerned with labor, the environment, women's rights, and fair trade organize and operate across national boundaries. Many social movements have thus forged transnational ties, possess members in more than one nation, and engage in action against global forces of economic liberalization. Although scholars have studied domestic social movements in some detail, the emergence of transnational movements raises several important questions: how do activists and organizations build coalitions across national boundaries, how do they negotiate strategies of action and identity with partners in other nations, and how do they deal with special constraints and differences inherent in cross-national action? This project investigates these questions by studying several successful, highly active, and well-funded coalitions between United States and Mexican labor unions, as well as some more temporary and less successful alliances. The project's methods rely on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a selected sample of leaders, organizers, and rank-and-file members who have participated in cross-nation labor actions or acted as brokers between Mexican and American unions. The results describe the breadth and depth of transnational networks among labor movements, identify the organizational and cultural means by which networks emerge across national boundaries, and explain how coalitions manage to cooperate and overcome conflict in the face of differing national, ethnic, and linguistic identities. The project thus provides a clearer understanding of how transnational economic change shapes local and national labor movements, and how such movements respond to the new global environment they face.