Author: Apostolidis, Paul

Source: Historical Reflections, Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2009 , pp. 137-162(26)

Publisher: Berghahn Journals

Abstract:

This essay considers whether legal rights remain a core resource for transforming the social situation of low-income workers in the United States. In particular, how does the recent expansion of the immigrant workforce in the US affect the prospects for workers to generate a symbiosis between legalist struggles and rank-and-file movement activism? I demonstrate that the migration narratives of Mexican immigrant union activists intervene in the law's formation of political subjects, such that the thorough disciplining of a docile subject by the law does not necessarily result from legalist activism. Instead, migration stories furnish alternative sources of identity that can mitigate these effects and spur the translation of legalist struggle into radical-democratic unionism. My analysis is based on interviews with immigrant workers who led a highly unusual movement of resistance from 1995-2005 at a large beef processing plant in Washington State.

Keywords: DEMOCRATIC THEORY; IDENTITY; IMMIGRATION; LABOR UNIONS; LATINOS; LAW; MEAT-PACKING; RIGHTS

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/hrrh2009.350108

Publication date: 2009-03-01

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• Historical Reflections/Reflections Historiques has established a well-deserved reputation for publishing high quality articles of wide-ranging interest for over thirty years. The journal, which publishes articles in both English and French, is committed to exploring history in an interdisciplinary framework and with a comparative focus. Historical approaches to art, literature, and the social sciences; the history of mentalities and intellectual movements; the terrain where religion and history meet: these are the subjects to which Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques is devoted.
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