Scholars of contemporary capitalism have argued that the rise of flexible accumulation and precarious employment has left workers disillusioned and adrift, experiencing an erosion of solidarities and human bonds.  In contrast, this study uncovers a sense of collective efficacy where existing scholarship would lead us to least expect it: among workers who are, structurally, among the most marginal and vulnerable.  The case examined is a Chicago living wage campaign which for three long years mobilized workers laboring outside of traditional employment relationships.  Why would a sense of collective efficacy emerge when participants’ ability to make change had remained in doubt for years?  Why would workers who lack structural power come to feel so efficacious?  Drawing on in-depth interviews with campaign participants, I argue that their understandings of power arose from their experience of collective action.  The case sheds new light on our understanding of identity and subjectivity under contemporary capitalism.  

Given the finding that the marginalized are less politically engaged, we examine those who are arguably the most marginalized—the undocumented—and ask: what underwrites recent cases where the undocumented have been politically engaged in meaningful and substantive ways?  Additionally, how does this compare to the existing literature on the practice of citizenship for those with formal rights? And what are the implications for our understanding of political participation in the contemporary U.S.? We seek to address these questions by examining cases where undocumented immigrants act like citizens even though they lack formal political rights. Our cases deviate from previous literature which argues that more marginalized people participate less and that those without formal rights engage in contentious politics in lieu of ‘normal,’ institutional politics. Our analysis of the DREAMers and of immigrant worker centers helps us rethink this traditional distinction between ‘normal’ and contentious politics. Moving beyond a focus on the specific actions that fall into each category, we instead emphasize how the context for these actions is crucial to understanding the foundations of political participation. In particular, we argue that the same ‘normal’ political actions taken by citizens versus non-citizens reveals different foundations underneath; for those without formal rights, what underwrites participation in ‘normal’ and contentious politics alike is what we call grassroots citizenship. We examine how the political participation of undocumented workers and DREAMers takes place within immigrant organizations, and how it relies on three pillars: solidarity, critical analysis, and collective action. While previous literature has emphasized the urban and local nature of active, alternative citizenships, our cases operate at multiple scales, demonstrating how grassroots citizenship can be leveraged and ‘scaled up’ to state and national levels. Additionally, through an analysis of grassroots citizenship we get some purchase on the question of why politicians sometimes listen to people who cannot vote.

How can we best conceptualize working-class mobilization in the post-Fordist regime of flexible accumulation? With the increasing precariousness of employment, how do workers press their demands? While the emphasis thus far has been on the melding of workplace and community organizing, which is a hallmark of “social movement unionism,” I argue that there is a countervailing trend afoot that has received far less attention—that is, a bifurcation of strategies. Only those select workers who are in powerful structural locations, such as transportation and distribution workers, are in a position to take the economic route while the swelling ranks of the precariat have turned instead to the political sphere to press their demands. Additionally, I address what this bifurcation means for labor's power and working-class formation. Does the separation of economic and political protest lead to a weakened working class? Such a separation has been thought to undermine class-based solidarities, with community identities undermining workplace-based ones. I argue, however, that the contemporary context is different in that precarious workers’ mobilizations in the community have become explicitly class-based. In contrast to the long-standing notion of the workplace as the hotbed of working-class consciousness, the community has emerged as a locus of class-based perspectives and solidarities. Throughout I emphasize not just strategy and material gain for the working class, but also shifts in civil society, organizations, and subjectivity. My argument is developed through a case study of the Chicago Jobs and Living Wage Campaign, which is then compared to other cases of precarious worker mobilization around the globe. Examining the tensions inherent in precarious workers’ political mobilization in the context of the post-Fordist neoliberal state, the study has implications for labor and social movements, class formation, citizenship, and contemporary capitalism

Scholarship on events has been devoted primarily to large-scale occurrences that transform macro structures. Here we put forward a perspective that we term eventful subjectivity which moves the analysis of events in two related directions. First, we shift the arena of eventful analysis from rare world historical occurrences to smaller, more frequent events. Second, we direct attention away from macro-structural outcomes to micro-level changes in understanding. We employ the framework of eventful subjectivity to examine a living wage campaign in Chicago, demonstrating how the multi-faceted diversity of the campaign – in the context of collective action – engendered solidarity rather than fragmentation.

In a context of increasing globalization and neoliberal restructuring and with labor's power diminishing vis-à-vis employers, American workers have turned in recent years to community-based campaigns targeting local government. These mobilizations have received considerable attention from scholars who see this emerging community orientation as a significant strategic innovation. This study, alternatively, focuses on the subjective and ideological consequences of such mobilizations for those engaged in protest. In particular, it seeks to extend social movement theory regarding the transformative impact of collective action by asking: how do distinct forms of collective action bring about particular kinds of consciousness and identity among participants?

Scholars rooted in a variety of traditions – from theorists of “post-industrial” society and “new” social movements to state theorists and geographers – have suggested that identities fostered at the local level are characterized by a “defensive,” “introverted,” or “retrospective” quality. This study examines a local mobilization, the case of a living wage campaign in Chicago, which deviates from these expectations. Through an analysis of interviews with participants, I find that instead of spurring defensiveness the campaign engendered a citizenship identity that was both active and inclusive. In explaining why my findings diverge from existing theories of identity formation, my analysis highlights three conceptual deficiencies in the literature with respect to (1) the distinction between local versus transnational collective action, (2) the relationship between social movement goals/tactics and outcomes, and (3) the prioritization of “new” social movements over the labor movement. Examining the citizenship identities that developed during Chicago's living wage campaign is instructive, finally, for understanding the sources of counter-hegemonic subjectivity within a broader context of eroding citizenship rights and a dominant market fundamentalist ideology. More generally, this analysis paves the way for a more productive engagement among theories of social movements, citizenship, labor, and globalization.