3 results
29 - Social movements as a solution to European aporia?
- Edited by Erik Jones, European University Institute, Florence and The Johns Hopkins University, Maryland
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- Book:
- European Studies
- Published by:
- Agenda Publishing
- Published online:
- 22 December 2023
- Print publication:
- 30 April 2020, pp 132-136
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Summary
The EU is facing a critical moment in its history. The sustained growth of Euroskeptic and populist parties, the recent economic and financial crisis with its corollary of austerity, the never-ending soap opera of Brexit, the increase in terrorist attacks by Islamist radicals and far-right activists, the deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean, and the abandonment and repression of migrants in the north of Paris or in Calais, are only some of the critical issues challenging the EU. These problems are partly a consequence of EU politics and policies. They are also, in one way or another, all connected. More fundamentally, several of these problems challenge the very founding principles of the European project.
Europe's crisis of hospitality and solidarity
Traumatized by the horrors of World War II, the founders of the EU first aspired to lay the foundations for lasting peace. In this respect, their project has been incredibly successful. Europe has never enjoyed such a long period without wars (one could point out the wars that followed the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, but they were not within the borders of the EU). However, several other founding aspirations of the EU have not enjoyed such fortune. Article 1 of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights states that human dignity is inviolable and must be respected and protected. The following articles go on to celebrate the right to life, the protection of human integrity, and the prohibition of degrading treatments. Similarly, the digital portal of the EU asserts that “The EU protects all minorities and vulnerable groups, and stands up for the oppressed. Regardless of a person's nationality, gender, language group, culture, profession, disability or sexuality, the EU insists on equal treatment for all.” Such noble principles are allegedly at the core of European values: “the EU values are common to the EU countries in a society in which inclusion, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination prevail. These values are an integral part of our European way of life.”
These declarations sound great and should give rise to humane policies. But according to the Missing Migrants Project, between 2014 and 2018 about 18,000 refugees died in the Mediterranean.
4 - Globalization and the Politics of Trade Union Preferences in France
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- By Marcos Ancelovici, Université du Québec à Montreál (UQAM)
- Edited by Peter A. Hall, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Wade Jacoby, Brigham Young University, Utah, Jonah Levy, University of California, Berkeley, Sophie Meunier, Princeton University, New Jersey
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- Book:
- The Politics of Representation in the Global Age
- Published online:
- 05 June 2014
- Print publication:
- 07 April 2014, pp 75-99
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Summary
When trying to account for trade union preferences over globalization, dominant accounts in political economy point to the factor endowment of actors and contend that their preferences will be determined by the way these factors are affected by the opening of borders. These accounts generally predict that, in developed countries, low-skill workers located in trade-exposed sectors will tend to oppose globalization and, therefore, unions representing these workers will favor an antiglobalization stance. Although they build on different premises, neo-Marxist and Polanyian accounts also assume that trade union preferences over globalization reflect the effects of globalization, even if these effects are filtered by national institutional configurations. Put simply, in developed countries trade unions are likely to oppose globalization because the latter inevitably runs counter to the interests of the working class and the preservation of redistributive collective arrangements.
In spite of their differences, these accounts share a common assumption: The key to understanding trade union preferences over globalization lies in situating workers with respect to the international economy and assessing the material effects of globalization on these workers. Such empirical investigation and assessment is indispensible, but it is not necessarily the best way to make sense of trade union preferences. This chapter argues that understanding trade union preferences over globalization requires that we approach unions as complex organizations rather than merely aggregates of individual workers. It follows that we need to track down how specific events affect unions rather than workers and trace how these events are interpreted, pulled in, and used by actors seeking to strengthen their position inside their union as well as ensure the maintenance of their union. Furthermore, this chapter claims that the preferences of organizations are neither given nor generated instantaneously; they are the result of a multilayered political-cultural process that unfolds over time. In order to substantiate this claim, this chapter compares the preference formation process of the two largest labor confederations in France, the French Democratic Labor Confederation (CFDT) and the General Labor Confederation (CGT), since the late 1970s. It argues that their current preferences over globalization are the product of a deeper reorientation that took place in the 1980s as the CFDT and the CGT experienced a major organizational crisis that generated a critical juncture and faced the failure of President Mitterrand's “Keynesianism in one country.”
12 - The Origins and Dynamics of Organizational Resilience
- Edited by Peter A. Hall, Harvard University, Massachusetts, Michèle Lamont, Harvard University, Massachusetts
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- Book:
- Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era
- Published online:
- 05 May 2013
- Print publication:
- 22 April 2013, pp 346-376
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Summary
Since the late 1990s, in the wake of John Sweeney's election as president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in the United States, the study of labor revitalization has become a small industry. Although this industry (e.g., Frege and Kelly 2004; Milkman and Voss 2004; Turner 2005) has identified many external (e.g., employer hostility, unfavorable legal framework, outsourcing, neoliberalism, globalization) and internal (e.g., disconnected leadership, bureaucratic inertia, fear of change, inter-union competition) factors that can shape trade unions’ decision to engage in revitalization strategies, it has given a secondary status, if any at all, to culture. In doing so, these studies have neglected the cognitive constraints and symbolic work that underpin the diagnoses of trade unions and have thus failed to explain how labor activists come to believe that revitalization is necessary in the first place and furthermore, devise a strategy for achieving that goal.
This chapter attempts to fill this gap by comparing the political-cultural processes behind the divergent outcomes of two French labor organizations: the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT) and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT). Whereas the former reacted relatively quickly to decline and demonstrated resilience, the latter proved incapable of responding adequately to decline and drifted for a long period before it finally tried to change course. What is most puzzling in the case of the CGT is that it lost approximately 65 percent of its membership between 1977 and 1990 without acknowledging that it was undergoing a crisis and therefore without substantially attempting to take a new course. Only in the early 1990s did it finally recognize that dramatic changes were required, and it took another ten years to engage in recruitment campaigns to try to attract new members. How can we make sense of such drift? How can we explain the contrast between the CFDT and the CGT? Why has the CFDT proven more resilient than the CGT? More generally, why are some organizations more resilient than others?