Labor Studies Journal

This paper seeks to understand the low level of nurses’ labor militancy in El Salvador and Nicaragua compared with many other countries. Key to the analysis is the concept of oppositional consciousness, which was developed for the study of how oppressed groups convert anger over unjust treatment into vocal and even disruptive demands for change. I use data collected through interviews and focus groups to argue that while nurses in El Salvador and Nicaragua face many of the same hindrances to militancy seen elsewhere, they are more exposed to cultural and institutional forces that discourage a contestational stance. Chief among these are the influence of religion in nurses’ schooling and socialization, and nurses’ lack of experience with unions specific to their occupation. The latter owes, in turn, to particular historical and political factors in each country.

This article considers the opportunities presented by the availability of migrant labor in the U.K. employment market and its utilization. The research found that despite their qualifications, migrant labor is underutilized, thereby resulting in a readily available workforce being shunned and excluded from participative integration. This raises economic and ethical questions whose exploration revealed structural barriers (individually, communally, and institutionally) that impeded migrants’ fulfillment of citizenship obligations to host communities and U.K. businesses. The article’s key contribution is to highlight a skills mismatch and the persistent absence of institutional, communal, and strategic frameworks to support migrants’ integration.

Over the past decade, Europe has stumbled from crisis to crisis, shaking the confidence of observers in the continent’s capacity to maintain the egalitarian societies and socially embedded markets that have long informed arguments for social democratic reforms in the United States. As tensions in democratic capitalism have intensified, many aspects of Europe’s established political economic order have come under pressure. This review essay explores key causal processes behind the continent’s predicament. It does so to illustrate challenges and opportunities for organized labor in Europe, and to call on social scientists to reengage with the class politics of capitalism.

This article examines workers’ experiences with a union characterized by a social unionist framing and repertoire in the political realm and bureaucratic servicing of problems in the workplace realm. It analyzes interviews with members and officials about union strategies within privatized homecare predominately provided by immigrant women in Toronto. Workers report both consensual and tense relations with clients prompting them to praise their union’s political strategies yet criticize its limited workplace support. Findings indicate the importance of framing and repertoire that connect quality work with quality care, yet indicate a complex labor process that requires more conceptual and strategic attention.