Informal Cultures of Resistance and Worker Mobilization: The Case of Migrant Workers in the Italian Logistics Sector
通过意大利物流行业移民工人的民族志研究，揭示了工人自我组织的三个文化与社会过程：形成共同不满、利用不平等符号识别群体、建立斗争社区，提出“非正式抵抗文化”概念。
In the context of the rising power of capital over labour, research on labour mobilization is important. From the research literature, we know that labour mobilizations might be initiated by trade unions or via workers’ self-organization. Yet, we know little about the cultural and social processes through which individual workers come to self-organize in the first place. To address this gap, we present ethnographic research on precarious migrant workers mobilizing with the support of an Italian independent union called SICobas. Our study highlights three processes of self-organizing: formulating shared meanings of discontent, identifying as a group using symbols of inequality and exclusion, and forming communities of struggle. Drawing on Scott’s understanding of resistance, we theorize these three processes as ‘informal cultures of resistance’. This concept contributes to emergent research on workers’ self-organization, showing the significance of the cultural and social processes that can often underpin formal labour mobilizations.