Aziz Choudry

Disciplining Dissent: NGOs and Community Organizations

In the context of neo-liberal globalization, we argue that many local community organizations and international development and advocacy NGOs share certain characteristics that impact struggles for justice, North and South. These include professionalization, collaboration with, and recognition and support from the state and/or international institutions, and a detachment from more critical forms of resistance. Drawing from experience and analysis of the Quebec community sector and involvement of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in ‘global justice’ movements, we suggest that this exclusion and reshaping of political space presents new challenges for peoples movements. We examine: (a) the development and professionalization of community organizations and NGOs; (b) the role of knowledge in consolidating professional power; and (c) challenges to these hegemonic trends from within activist organizing milieux. En el contexto de la globalización neoliberal, sostenemos que muchas de las organizaciones cívicas locales y Organizaciones no gubernamentales (NGOs, por sus siglas en inglés) de defensa y desarrollo internacional, comparten ciertas características que impactan las luchas por la justicia, tanto al norte como al sur. Estas incluyen profesionalización, colaboración y reconocimiento y apoyo del estado y/o las instituciones internacionales, y un desinterés de formas más críticas de resistencia. En base a la experiencia y el análisis del sector de la comunidad de Quebec y la participación de organizaciones no gubernamentales (NGOs) en movimientos de ‘justicia global’, sugerimos que esta exclusión y la reestructuración del espacio político presentan nuevos desafíos a los movimientos de la gente. Examinamos: (a) el desarrollo y la profesionalización de organizaciones cívicas y NGOs; (b) el papel del conocimiento en consolidar el poder profesional; y (c) los retos a estas tendencias hegemónicas desde el interior del entorno que organiza a los activistas. 在新自由主义全球化背景下，我们认为许多地方性社区组织与国际发展和游说性非政府组织共享某些特征，在北方和南方都影响了正义斗争。这些特征包括专业化、与国家和/或国际机构合作，得到其承认和支持，以及远离更为批判性的抵抗形式。基于对魁北克社区的经验及其分析，以及非政府组织（NGOs）在“全球正义”运动中的参与，我们表明，这种排他性和政治空间的重塑对大众运动提出了新的挑战。我们考察了：（1）社区组织和非政府组织的发展和专业化；（2）知识在巩固专业权力中的作用；以及（3）对来自于活动家组织背景内部的这些支配性趋势的挑战。

Labour struggles for workplace justice: Migrant and immigrant worker organizing in Canada

This article explores the dynamics of labour organizing among migrant and immigrant workers in Canada, focusing on two case studies: first, recent efforts to organize migrant farmworkers in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program; and, second, the work of the Immigrant Workers’ Centre in Montreal. The Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program, which employs workers from Mexico and Caribbean countries, is often viewed by policymakers and employers as an example of ‘best practices’ in migration policy. Yet workers in the program experience seasonal employment characterized by long hours and low wages, and are exempt from many basic labour standards. The Immigrant Workers’ Centre formed in 2000 to provide a safe place for migrant and racialized immigrant workers to come together around problems in their workplaces. Through these case studies, we examine labour organization efforts including advocacy and grassroots organizing through the Immigrant Workers’ Centre and legal challenges attempting to secure recognition of freedom of association rights for farmworkers. The article explores the ‘limits and possibilities’ of these strategies, and concludes by assessing the implications for labour organizing among the growing numbers of migrant and immigrant workers employed in a wide range of low-wage, low-security occupations due to the recent expansion of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

What’s Left? Canada’s ‘global justice’ movement and colonial amnesia

This article examines the failure of Canada’s larger, Left-leaning NGOs active in global justice networks to properly engage with the struggles of Indigenous peoples. Taking a ‘White progressive economic nationalist’ position that fails to examine Canada’s historical and contemporary exercise of colonialism, such NGOs end up reproducing myths of nation-building, fail to address colonial injustices closer to home and ignore the resources that Indigenous struggles offer in the fight against neoliberalism.

Activist Research Practice: Exploring Research and Knowledge Production for Social Action

Research is a major aspect and fundamental component of many social struggles and movements for change. Understanding social movement networks as significant sites of knowledge production, this article situates and discusses processes and practice of activist research produced outside of academia in these milieus in the broader context of the ‘knowledge-practice’ of social movements. In dialogue with scholarly literature on activist research, it draws from the author’s work as an activist researcher, and a current study of small activist research non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with examples from movement research on transnational corporate power and resistance to capitalist globalization.. It explicates research processes arising from, and embedded in, relationships and dialogue with other activists and organizations that develop through collaboration in formal and informal networks; it contends that building relationships is central to effective activist research practice. In addition to examining how activist researchers practice, understand and validate their research, this paper also shows how this knowledge is constructed, disseminated and mobilized as a tool for effective social action/organizing.

Examining the Disconnect Between Mass Mobilizations and International Trade Union/NGO Networks in Struggles over Bilateral Free Trade and Investment Agreements

Abstract Bilateral free trade and investment agreements (FTAs) have proliferated since the breakdown of multilateral negotiations. In several countries, these newer agreements have elicited large movements and mobilizations, yet have attracted relatively little attention from transnational ‘civil society’ networks concerned with global justice. This article suggests that there has frequently been a disconnect between major mobilizations against FTAs in a number of countries which have often brought together diverse sectors of societies, and international NGO and trade union networks, especially those located in North America and Europe which have generally been slow to address the bilateral deals. This article highlights some specific challenges for educating for mobilization against these agreements, and shares insights from grounded struggles against FTAs. It outlines growing connections and collaborations for resistance between movements, and views movements themselves as significant sources of conceptual resources for analysis and future resistance against FTAs.

Against the Flow: Maori Knowledge and Self-Determination Struggles Confront Neoliberal Globalization in Aotearoa/ New Zealand

Much has been written about Inthgenous Peoples’ responses to neoliberal globalization.1 But the intellectual contributions of Inthgenous thinkers and activists towards conceptualizing and contextualizing this process in a much longer history of colonialism and resistance are often overlooked. Continued assertions of self-determination and demands for decolonization by many Indigenous Peoples are a rich source of theory and critique of both capitalist economic systems and the colonial nature of the state itself. As I argue elsewhere (Choudry, 2009), transnational mobilizations of Indigenous Peoples are one facet of a multilayered, multifaceted, complex struggle, linking to local, concrete struggles against both state and capital, and regional initiatives. Many contend that the transnational corporations (TNCs) are new colonial forces, newer versions of the colonial chartered corporations, such as the British East India, Hudson’s Bay, or New Zealand Companies (Jackson, 1999, 2007a; Kelsey, 1999). This chapter highlights Indigenous (Maori) analyses and action against neoliberal capitalism, contextualizing this phenomenon historically, emphasizing how neoliberal theory and practice corn-modify all things; exalt individualism over collective obligations, reciprocity, and community; are fundamentally predicated on exploitation of people and nature rather than an interrelationship which ensures their mutual survival, and embody a colonial mindset.

Building Counter-Power from the Ground up

The chapter reflects upon tensions over learning and knowledge production in international non-governmental organisation (NGO) and social movement networks contesting global free market capitalism, now widely known as the ‘global justice movement’. It discusses aspects of NGO/social movement activist networks opposing the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum during the 1990s, and more recent activism against bilateral free trade and investment agreements, (FTAs) both in the Asia-Pacific region.

Activist research and organizing: blurring the boundaries, challenging the binaries

This article draws from ongoing research into the practices and processes of activist researchers. It discusses social relations of knowledge production located outside of academia with/in social movement milieus. Focusing on the politics of research in people’s organizations and social movement organizations in the Philippines, it builds on interviews with activist researchers. It argues for a Marxist theory of praxis which insists upon the unity of thought and action, contending that research and organizing in this context are mutually constitutive and that knowledge production in these movements is dialectically related to the material conditions experienced in struggles for social and economic justice.

Bannerji, Himani. 2011. Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology

Bannerji, Himani. 2011. Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. ISBN 978-1-55130-389-5. Paperback: 34.95 CAD. Pages: 272.

Learning in Struggle, Sharing Knowledge

For the WTO resistance, it is easier to gather people across countries to mobilize together. But with FTAs, we are struggling on our own. (Participant, Fighting FTAs International Strategy workshop, July 2006, Bangkok)