Lord Have Mercy, Sometimes Feel I Have No Rights: Worker Center Members Fight for Inclusion

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Race, Gender, Class and Work Part I

Abstract

The nexus of state criminalization and violence, and neoliberal labor market reforms of increased contingent non-standard jobs operate to exacerbate and reinforce the legacies of exploitation, stigmatization, and exclusion of poor and working class people, particularly Latinos and African-Americans, from “full citizenship” or social, political, and economic rights and inclusion (see Marshall 1992 [1950]; Somers 2008; Somers and Roberts 2008). In this paper I examine how these structures of exclusion operate and how community based worker centers and their members are struggling to dismantle them while demanding full citizenship rights. My analysis is based on my year and a half long ethnographic research of two Chicago based worker centers, who are organizing Latino immigrants and African-Americans who are working or seeking work in low-wage temporary staffing and service jobs.

References:
Marshall, T. H. 1992 (1950). “Citizenship and Social Class.” Pp. 3-51 in Citizenship and
Social Class, by T.H. Marshall and T. Bottomore. London: Pluto Perspectives.

Somers, Margaret. 2008. Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness, and the Right to Have Rights. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Somers, Margaret R. and Christopher N.J. Roberts. 2008. “Toward a New Sociology of Rights: A Genealogy of “Buried Bodies” of Citizenship and Human Rights.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 4:385-425.

Author

• Jessica Dianne Cook, University of Illinois-Chicago