Marcel Paret

A second double movement? Polanyi and shifting global opinions on neoliberalism:

Karl Polanyi’s theory of the ‘double movement’ has gained great currency in recent years to explain the global growth of contemporary social movements resisting neoliberalism. However, there has been no statistical research demonstrating whether these protest movements represent a more general trend of growing discontent with ‘disembedding’ markets from public control. This article uses questions from the World Values Survey to construct an ‘embeddedness’ index measuring public opinion on the desired relationship between states and markets. Focusing on public opinion in 20 countries during the 1990s, the analysis poses three questions: First, is there evidence of increasing global support for ‘re-embedding’ markets? Second, how does such opinion vary across regions of the world? Finally, what is the class and gender composition of this latent countermovement? The results provide substantial evidence of an emerging countermovement in public opinion over the 1990s with complex class, gender, and geopolitical variation.

Precarious Labor Politics: Unions and the Struggles of the Insecure Working Class in the United States and South Africa

The growing precariousness of the working class and the declining significance of unions has given rise to precarious politics: non-union struggles by insecurely employed and low-income groups. Under what conditions do unions incorporate these struggles as part of a broader labor movement? This article examines how unions responded to two particularly visible examples of precarious politics in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the struggles of low-wage noncitizen workers and communities in California, USA; and the struggles of poor citizen communities with high unemployment in Gauteng, South Africa. Contrary to what the legacy of unionism in each context would predict, unions became fused with precarious politics in California but were separated from them in Gauteng. This surprising divergence stemmed from the reconfiguration of unions in each place, most notably due to steady union decline in California and democratization in Gauteng. Whereas unions in California understood noncitizen workers as central to their own revitalization, the close relationship between unions and the state in Gauteng created distance from community struggles. Both cases underscore the importance of workers’ citizenship status and the role of the state for understanding how unions relate to precarious politics.

Precarity and agency through a migration lens

Abstract This special issue leverages the migrant experience to better understand precarity and agency in the contemporary world. By way of introduction, we examine the broader bodies of literature on precarity and agency, relate them to research on migration, and link them to the contributions in the special issue. Laying a foundation for further research, we illuminate three approaches to study the precarity–migration–agency nexus: an industry-specific approach, a sending country/deportee approach, and a collective action approach. We conclude with a critical analysis of freedom and national borders, considering the ‘open borders’ movement, postnational citizenship, and opposition to marketization.

Apartheid Policing: examining the US migrant labour system through a South African Lens

This article draws a parallel between the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the post-IRCA immigration regime in the USA. I argue that both regimes were organised around Apartheid Policing, which may be defined as a legal process consisting of three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: differentiation of migrants into non-citizen insiders with legal residence rights and non-citizen outsiders without them; stabilisation of migrants as permanent or long-term residents, enabling the growth of the migrant workforce; and marginalisation of migrants as politically vulnerable outsiders, including exploitation at work. But the two regimes were supported by different political and ideological apparatuses. While placing a disproportionate burden on Latino migrants, the post-IRCA immigration regime differed from the Apartheid regime in that it was not organised around an explicit racial hierarchy, and offered non-citizens a greater array of rights. As a result, Apartheid Policing under the post-IRCA immigration regime is potentially more politically sustainable.

Precarious Class Formations in the United States and South Africa

Recent scholarship highlights the global expansion of precarious layers of the working class. This article examines the growth and collective struggles of such precarious layers in two very different places: California, United States and Gauteng, South Africa. The comparison challenges and extends existing research in two ways. First, it shows that the spread of insecurity is far from uniform, taking different forms in different places. Lack of citizenship is more crucial for workers in California, whereas underemployment is more crucial for workers in Gauteng. Second, it shows that insecure segments of the working class are capable of developing collective agency. This agency may be rooted in identities that extend beyond precarious employment, and will reflect the particular forms of insecurity that are prevalent in the given context. Such diversity is illustrated by examining May Day protests in California and community protests around service delivery in Gauteng.

Golden state uprising: migrant protest in California, 1990–2010

Abstract Dominant narratives of migrant resistance focus on the massive protests of 2006, but migrant protest was significant well before this landmark event. Drawing on an original database of 222 migrant protest events, this paper traces the development of migrant resistance in California between 1990 and 2010. We argue that migrant protest may be understood as political ‘acts of citizenship’, which vary as they respond to specific vulnerabilities and political attachments. While a non-trivial minority of protests exhibited a global politics, oriented towards migrants’ home countries or other places outside of the USA, the overwhelming majority of protests may be understood as inclusion politics, which sought to counter migrant precarity by promoting the integration and fair treatment of migrants within the USA. Within this broad emphasis on inclusion, however, migrant protest in California alternated between a work politics focused on issues such as wages and unionization, a protection politics focused on public services and goods, and an immigration politics centered on issues of legalization and law enforcement. The latter became increasingly prevalent over time, and would come to define the contemporary immigrant rights movement. Taken as a whole, the evidence affirms that migrants have significant capacity for developing collective agency and resistance.

Migration politics: Mobilizing against economic insecurity in the United States and South Africa:

From the mid-2000s, the United States and South Africa, respectively, experienced significant pro-migrant and anti-migrant mobilizations. Economically insecure groups played leading roles. Why did these groups emphasize politics of migration, and to what extent did the very different mobilizations reflect parallel underlying mechanisms? Drawing on 41 months of ethnographic fieldwork and 119 interviews with activists and residents, I argue that the mobilizations deployed two common strategies: symbolic group formation rooted in demands for recognition, and targeting the state as a key source of livelihood. These twin strategies encouraged economically insecure groups to emphasize national identities and, in turn, migration. Yet, they manifested in different types of mobilization due to the varying characteristics of the groups involved, and the different national imaginaries and organizing legacies they had to draw upon. The analysis demonstrates the capacity of economically insecure groups to make collective claims. It also shows that within the context of anti-migrant nationalism, economic insecurity amplifies the significance of national belonging, citizenship, and migration as important terrains of collective struggle.

Working-class fragmentation, party politics, and the complexities of solidarity in South Africa’s United Front:

Recent scholarship laments the growing fragmentation of the working class due to flexible labour regimes and unemployment. This paper examines an emerging effort in South Africa to counter this fragmentation: the United Front project, initiated and led by the National Union of Metalworkers South Africa (NUMSA). Drawing on 74 interviews conducted at two different NUMSA-led protests in Johannesburg, the analysis unpacks two sets of tensions. One set of tensions revolves around class politics, which pertain to the divide between unionized workers in relatively stable employment, and impoverished communities ravaged by unemployment. The other set of tensions revolves around party politics, including divisions with respect to the United Front’s opposition to the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC). Each dimension reveals both crucial sources of solidarity and potential obstacles, showing that forging a broad working-class unity in the current period is complex, but not impossible.

Critical Nostalgias in Democratic South Africa

ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that some black residents in South Africa experience nostalgia for the racist and authoritarian apartheid regime. What dynamics generate apartheid nostalgia, and what work does it do? This article draws on in-depth interviews with black residents of impoverished urban townships and informal settlements. I argue that by eliminating formal racial discrimination and redirecting popular aspirations towards the state, South Africa’s democratic transition encouraged apartheid nostalgia, which residents deployed to criticize the post-apartheid state and imagine alternative possibilities. Far from uniform, nostalgic expressions focused on four objects: social protection, migrant exclusion, bureaucratic integrity, and white governance. Each object represented an aspect of the apartheid state that residents sought to resurrect. The analysis calls for a shift from a politics of regret, focused on shame for past atrocities, to a politics of nostalgia, which understands idealized projections of past objects as a terrain of struggle.

The politics of local resistance in urban South Africa: Evidence from three informal settlements

Between 2009 and 2014, South Africa experienced widespread protests. In contrast to prominent examples of global protest during the same period, they were localized and did not push for broad political and economic transformation. To explain these features, this article draws from three ethnographic and interview-based case studies of local protest and organizing within informal settlements in and around Johannesburg. The author argues that urban poverty and the experience of market insecurity, on the one hand, and democratization and the experience of state betrayal, on the other hand, gave rise to specific political orientations. Residents responded to market insecurity by demanding collective consumption for place-based communities, and they responded to state betrayal by demanding fulfillment of a national liberation social contract through administrative fixes. Both strategies confined activism to the local level and limited broader challenges. The findings have implications for research on both the urban poor and social movements.