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Però, Davide

Resisting outsourcing : learning from migrant workers' power-buildingstrategies in the British service sector

2023 - Franco Angeli

P. 100-120

  • This article focuses on an understudied aspect in labour process theory, that of workers' collective contentious practices. In particular, it considers how workers can build power and induce change in regimes of outsourcing, which are particularly exploitative. Using Schmalz et al.'s (2018) typology of powers as a heuristic device, the article analytically describes how the outsourced migrant cleaners of British ‘indie unions' have channelled their solidarity into collective actions and redressed some of the harshest conditions faced.
  • Drawing on the power resources approach, the article highlights the importance of no longer assuming the production site as the only crucial arena for precarious workers' power-building practices, as the relative autonomy of the workplace postulated in labour process theory would imply. Rather, this article suggests extending the analytical gaze outside the workplace to comprise the ‘community' and the public sphere where workers' contentious initiatives are also often staged and won. [Publisher's text]

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Sociologia del lavoro : 167, 3, 2023