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CONTESTING THE RACIAL DIVISION OF LABOR FROM BELOW

Representation and Union Organizing Among African American and Immigrant Workers1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2012

Virginia Parks  and
Dorian T. Warren
Virginia Parks*
Affiliation:
School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago
Dorian T. Warren
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
*
*Professor Virginia Parks, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, 969 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: vparks@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

Popular discourse and academic scholarship both accent divisions between African American and immigrant workers. These debates most often focus on the question of job competition, positioning African Americans and immigrant workers as a priori adversaries in the labor market. We take a different tack. Drawing upon a case study of hotel workers in Chicago, we identify ways in which workers themselves challenge and bridge these divisions. Specifically, we reveal how union organizing activities, such as diverse committee representation and inclusion of diversity language in contracts, counter notions of intergroup competition in an effort to build common cause that affirms rather than denies differences. We argue that these activities represent political efforts on the part of workers to contest and even reshape the racial and ethnic division of labor, thereby revealing competition as a socially contingent and politically mediated process.

Keywords

RaceImmigrationEmploymentLaborEthnic Competition
Type
Special Feature
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Fall 2012 , pp. 395 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2012

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Footnotes

1

We would like to acknowledge the willing participation of all our interview respondents as well as the members, staff, and leaders of Unite Here Local 1 who allowed us access as participant observers over a ten-year period. The names of all interviewees have been changed in order to grant anonymity. Authors are equal co-authors; names appear in alphabetical order.

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