Researching The Relationship Between Trade Unions and Migrant Workers, Examples From Different Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives (Roundtable)

In recent years, the relationship between trade unions and migrant workers has increasingly attracted scholarly attention along two main dimensions: on the one hand, scholars have focused on the specific conditions of migrant workers and on the extent to which trade unions have been able (or willing) to promote their economic, political and social integration  in host societies. On the other hand, scholars have specifically focused on trade unions and on the extent to which recruitment and representation of migrant workers could help their “revitalization” in a period of union decline. The attention posed by practitioners and academic community on the issue of “organizing” migrant workers falls in this second group of studies. The two literature streams not only have a different, also if strictly interrelated, focus but also have different epistemological perspectives. While the first study object has been mainly the domain of migration studies, with an anthropological, sociological and often a policy-oriented perspective; the second study object has entirely fallen within the industrial relation field with a more actor-centered approach. The need to combine migration and employment relation studies has been underlined in the scholarly debate but although researchers are moving in these directions, clear examples of a full cross-fertilization are rare. This section aims at facilitating such cross-fertilization by bringing together scholars who have undertaking research on issues of trade unions and immigration in the two study fields. Starting from these different perspectives the authors will bring their specific theoretical-methodological contributions informed by empirical research on the study object.