Mobilizing for migrant rights in the 21st century. Comparative perspectives on migrant organizing, labor and citizenship between Europe and the United States

IMES Round Table

Event

This roundtable with key note speaker Prof. Ruth Milkman (CUNY) focuses on migrant rights mobilizations and migrant organizing across Europe and the U.S. In a time of restrictive migration policies, increasing socio-economic inequalities and deteriorating social protection, migrant workers and their families have arguably become one of the most vulnerable segments in Western societies.

In a time of restrictive migration policies, increasing socio-economic inequalities and deteriorating social protection, migrant workers and their families have arguably become one of the most vulnerable segments in Western societies.

Over the last few decades, however, a number of civil society organizations have successfully mobilized in host societies for the rights of migrants, particularly for the undocumented population. In spite of increasing hostility, enforcement of labor protection mechanisms, improvement of working conditions, and enhanced access to education have been amongst the most tangible victories of these mobilizations.

• Why and how do local and national contexts matter when dealing with migration and political mobilization? 
• What are the challenges and opportunities of organizing migrants in western societies, particularly in current hostile environments? 
• How can we understand the relation between a number of different organized actors – i.e. labor unions, workers centers, advocacy groups, service organizations, community-based organizations – and the migrant population when looking at migrant rights mobilization? 

Sociologists Ruth Milkman and Sébastien Chauvin, together with migrant rights activist Valery Alzaga will tackle those issues by comparing the European and the American contexts. Drawing on a number of research case studies and direct organizing experiences in the cities of Los Angeles, New York, Paris and London, the panelists will shed a light on one of the most remarkable political struggles in contemporary western societies. UvA political scientist Floris Vermeulen will moderate the discussion

About the speakers

Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Academic Director of the Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. Milkman is a sociologist of labor and labor movements who has written on a variety of topics involving work and organized labor in the United States, past and present. Her most recent work has focused on low-wage immigrant workers in the U.S., analyzing their employment conditions as well as the dynamics of immigrant labor organizing.  Previously professor of sociology at the University of California (UCLA) from 1994 to 2009, she has written extensively about immigrant organizing in the cities of Los Angeles and New York.\

Valery Alzaga is a labour organizer and a migrant rights activist based in Amsterdam. Since 1999 she has organized with the Justice for Janitors Campaign throughout the U.S., UK and the Netherlands. She has also worked as an organizing coordinator in different cities throughout Europe, Turkey and South Africa. Her main interest is to develop new forms of bio-unionism and effective organizing and campaign strategies for newly emergent industries. She is currently working for the Change to Win - European Organizing Center.

Sébastien Chauvin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His research has dealt with a number of topics, including citizenship, migration, labor, gender and sexuality, mainly in France and the United States. Following his ethnography of day labor agency work and social movements in the Chicago region, he completed a collective study exploring the labor-market experience and following the union-supported mobilization of undocumented immigrant workers in France.