International unions as a sphere of working-class (re)organization: Anthropological insights into Latin American steel workers

Abstract

The (re)making of the working classes – both as a concept and as a focus of research – in the context of increasing global accumulation processes is one of the main concerns of contemporary labor anthropology (Carrier and Kalb, 2015; Carbonella and Kasmir, 2014 ). The uneven entanglement of groups of workers geographically dispersed across transnational circuits of production and valuation commanded by transnational corporations ( Piva, 2020 ; Astarita, 2006 ) has established new scopes for labor organizing (Soul and Anigstein, forthcoming). The literature on global supply/ value chains ( Van der Linden, 2008 ) and Special Economic Zones ( Neveling, 2018 ) allows global (social) spaces of accumulation to be identifi ed, where corporations and governments establish the conditions for precarious and super- exploitative labor regimes. Territories and communities are incorporated into these global spaces through localized processes triggered either by the installation of new facilities ( Torres Mej í a, 1991 ; Kasmir, 2014), the internationalization of former national or local companies (Soul, 2015), or the advance of private property and capitalist relations on common goods or services (Nash, 2006; Harvey, 2004). Additional insights have demonstrated the relevance of addressing the manifold paths to proletarization as mediators of the concrete historical confi gurations of the working classes – inasmuch as they also entail cultural, social and political exclusions, inclusions or divisions ( Sanchez and Str ü mpell, 2014 ; Carrier and Kalb, 2015; Durrenberger and Doukas, 2018; Hann and Parry, 2018 ). The current processes of global and transnational labor formations thus become a matter of interest for labor anthropology related to the making of the working classes.