The struggle for immigrant political rights in the United States is synonymous with the struggle for labor rights in the United States. The rise of immigrant worker political incorporation is linked with labor organizing and unionization. The political-economy of migrant workers in the U.S. has a rich and complex history, with long periods of complacency, stagnation and decline and sudden periods of rapid militancy, expansion, and membership growth. In preceding periods over the past century, immigrant workers and people of color have been the major source of new organizing: from the struggles of the late nineteenth century, to the militancy of the 1930s and 1940s, and the public sector organizing in the 1960s and 1970s, which was a major outcome of the Civil Rights Movement. Today as the neoliberal economy transforms from old to new means of social organization, immigrants too seek to organize and join local and national unions to expand their political power.

Since the mid-1970s, industrial restructuring has compromised the power of organized labor—creating new categories of contingent workers—including temps, part-timers, contract workers. Transnational immigrants employed under severely exploitative conditions now work in many of these new industries. Despite upturns and recessionary fluctuations over the last decade, immigrants continue to grow as part of the work force.

Though the leaders of organized labor often ignored economic restructuring and the emergence of new immigrant labor markets, in the last eight years some have begun to respond by attempting to energize the labor movement through a new emphasis on organizing for worker rights, membership growth, and political action. In the late-1990s, under the Sweeney New Voice leadership team, the AFL-CIO became more welcoming of immigrants. Still, while all the evidence shows that immigrants want unions, most new unionization drives have been uneven and sporadic. Still, some unions remain opposed to improving the conditions of workers through new immigrant organizing, marginalizing the potential power of a new font of labor strength.

This course examines the political economy of immigrant workers in the United States from a historical and contemporary perspective. This class will analyze immigrants and labor from five distinct categories: (1) the political economy of global and national migration and its influence on U.S. labor; (2) an examination of the relationship between immigrant and native-born workers; (3) the key issues of unskilled and skilled labor, and the importance of race and gender; (4) immigrant worker organizing drives and unionization efforts; (5) workers’ centers and other new models of immigrant organizing; (5) globalization, Transnationalization, and the politics of immigrant labor.

1. 40 page term paper on course topics under study – 10,000 words.

2. Participation in Class Readings: Note that readings must be completed before class meeting.

(Asterisk indicates required readings)

(1) Labor Migration in Historic Perspective

* Guerin-Gonzales, Camille and Carl Strikwerda. 1993. The Politics of Immigrant Worker: Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy Since 1830. New York: Holmes & Meier, pp. 3-45.

* Foner, Nancy. 2002. From Ellis Island to JFK: New York's Two Great Waves of Immigration. New Haven: Yale University Press. (entire book)

* Mink, Gwendolyn. 1993. Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 15-49.

(2) Labor, Migration, and the Politics of Neoliberalism in the Modern Age

* Mattoo, Aaditya and Antonia Carzaniga. Moving People to Deliver Services. 2003. Washington, DC: The World Bank and Oxford University Press.

* Silver, Beverly J. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization Since 1870. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

* Stalker, Peter. 2001. The No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration. New York: Verso. (reference book)

(3) Do Immigrants Compete with Native-Born Workers?

* Briggs, Vernon. 2001. Immigration and American Unionism. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, pp. 124-169.

* Waldinger, Roger. 1996. Still the Promised City? African-Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-32.

(4) Immigrants and Unskilled Labor

* Fink, Leon. 2003. The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. (entire book—for discussion throughout course)

Hathaway, Dale. 2000. Allies Across the Border: Mexico’s ‘Authentic Labor Front’ and Global Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

* Massey, Douglas S., Jorge Durand, and Noland J. Malone. 2002. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

(5) Unions and Organizing Unskilled Immigrants

Ness, Immanuel. "Organizing Immigrant Communities: UNITE’s Workers Center Strategy," in Bronfenbrenner, Kate, et al. 1998. Organizing to Win. pp 87-101.

* Schlosser, Eric. 2003. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 75-108.

Staudt, Kathleen and Irasema Coronado. 2002. Fronteras No Más: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

* Waldinger, Roger et al. in Bronfenbrenner, Kate. et al. 1998. Organizing to Win, pp. 102-119.

Waldinger, Roger and Michael Ira Lichter. 2003. How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 3-28.

(6) Globalization, Migration, Technological Change and Outsourcing

Carr, Nicholas G. 2004. Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Hyde, Alan. 2003. Working in Silicon Valley: Economic and Legal Analysis of a High-Velocity Labor Market. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, pp. 125-139.

*Levy, Frank and Richard J. Murnane. 2004. The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market. Princeton University Press.

* Weber, Steven. The Success of Open Source. 2004. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

(7) Unions and Skilled Labor

* Amman, John. "Unions and the New Economy: Motion Picture and Television Unions Offer a Model for New Media Professionals," Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 6, No. 2, fall 2002, 111-31.

* Freeman, Richard B. and Joel Rogers, "Open Source Unionism: Beyond Exclusive Collective Bargaining," Working USA: The Journal of Labor and Society, Volume 5: no. 4, Spring 2002

* Gildea, Michael W. July 29, 2003. "Testimony Before the House International Relations Committee on Immigration Regarding the L-1 Visa Program," Washington, DC. U.S. House of Representatives.

Mitchell, Graham R. 1999. America’s New Deficit: Shortage of Information Technology Workers. Washington, DC: United States Department of Commerce, Office of Technology Policy (Report).

*Shah, Sona. February 4, 2004. "Testimony to the Committee on International Relations," U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

(8)  Immigration, Race and Gender

* Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 2002. Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 3-28.

Kabeer, Naila. 2000. The Power to Choose: Bangladeshi Women and Labour Market Decisions in London and Dhaka. London, Verso, pp. 1-15.

* Pratt, Geraldine. 2004. Working Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.

(9) Immigration, the AFL-CIO, and Labor Organizing

Delgado, Héctor. 1993. New Immigrants, Old Unions. Temple University Press, pp. 1-19.

* Dubofsky, Melvyn. 1968. When Workers Organize: New York City in the Progressive Era. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 28-39.

Lynd, Staughton and Alice Lynd. 2000. (ed.) The New Rank and File. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-9, 201-209.

* Ness, Immanuel. 2003. "Globalization and Worker Organization in New York City’s Garment Industry." in Bender, Daniel E. and Richard A. Greenwald, eds., Sweatshop USA: The American Sweatshop in Historical Perspective. New York: Routledge.

(10) Organizing Thick and Thin Networks

* Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, pp.15-28.

Bacon, David. 2001. "Immigrant Workers Ask Labor ‘Which Side Are You On?’" from http://dbacon.igc.org/Work/05WhichSide.htm, May 20.

* Milkman, Ruth. 2000. Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California. Berkeley, University of California Press. (entire book—for discussion throughout class)

*Ness, Immanuel. Parallel Unions: Immigrant Organizing and Union Response. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming 2004, chapter 3, pp. 49-82.

(11) Immigrants and New Union Models: Workers Centers

* Gordon, Jennifer. 1999. "The Campaign for the Unpaid Wages Prohibition Act: Latino Immigrants Change New York Wage Law. Working Paper #4, International Migration Policy Program. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. September, pp. 1-45.

* Lerner, Steven. 2003. "Three Steps to Reorganizing and Rebuilding the Labor Movement." SEIU, Director of Building Services, Draft. Unpublished manuscript.

(12) Migration and Transnationalism

* Cordero-Guzman, Héctor, Robert C. Smith and Ramón Grosfoguel. 2001. Migration, Transnationalization, Race in a Changing New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Foner, Nancy, ed., 2001. New Immigrants in New York (Revised Edition). New York: Columbia University Press.

* Smith, Peter Michael. 2003. Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

* Stoller, Paul. 2002. Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

* Waldinger, Roger and Mehdi Bozorgmehr, eds., 1996. Ethnic Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

(13) Immigration, Globalization, and Labor Policy

Haus, Leah. 2002. Unions, Immigration and Internationalization: New Challenges and Changing Coalitions in the United States and France. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-38.

* Watts, Julie R. 2002. Immigration Policy and the Challenge of Globalization: Unions and Employers in Unlikely Alliance. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-18.

(14) Immigrants: Unions, Politics and the Future of the Labor Movement

* Clawson, Dan. 2003. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 164-205.

* Ness, Immanuel. Parallel Unions: Immigrant Organizing and Union Response. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, forthcoming 2004, chapter 3, pp. 49-82.

* Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster