Migrant Precarious Workers, power resources and the ambivalent Space of Trade Union Representation

Abstract

Recent scholarship on labour representation has increasingly moved beyond institutionalist accounts by foregrounding the collective action of migrant and precarious workers, often occurring outside established unions. This contribution engages with Power Resource Theory and intersectional approaches to argue that such mobilisations should be understood not as marginal phenomena, but as expressions of ongoing struggles over the reconfiguration of power in fragmented labour markets.

From this perspective, inclusion and exclusion are constitutive of how power resources are constructed and legitimised, while trade unions cannot be seen in binary terms of decline or resistance. Instead, they appear as ambivalent organisations shaped by competing logics of renewal and consolidation. Starting from here, the paper focuses on the “space between” institutionalisation and insurgency, where representative claims are negotiated and hybrid alliances emerge. This perspective allows for a more dynamic understanding of labour representation as a contested and evolving field of power resource reconfiguration.

Discussants

Lucia Amorosi, Università di Trento

Chair

Katia Pilati, Università di Trento