Contemporary research on the representation of migrant workers agrees that trade unions—historically criticised for protecting the interests of the established workforce only, failing to adequately represent migrant and BAME workers—have in recent years focused more on issues of race, ethnicity and social inclusion, although their efforts can be inconsistent and not always transparent (Martinez Lucio & Perret, 2009; Milkman, 2011). In the current debate, there are mainly two interrelated strategies of trade unions to represent migrant workers’ rights that more broadly reflect the trade union’s renewal strategies. The first one concerns the importance of civil society and especially co-ethnic networks to provide support to migrant workers and advocate for better working conditions, both online and offline. The second is the ability of trade unions to draw on their social movement origins and adopt an organising approach to stimulate activism among their members.
The ability to leverage public relations and civil society for migrant labour rights has long been recognised as a crucial strategy for unions (Martin, 2010; Theodore & Martin, 2007). In analysing the collective representation practices of migrant workers, scholars have progressively shifted their attention to the community organising approach, which emphasises the importance for unions to build alliances beyond the workplace and the union context (McBride & Greenwood, 2009), especially with workers’ ethnic communities, which are more characterised by solidaristic bonds and reciprocal support (Cioce et al., 2023). What has been termed a ‘community-oriented’ perspective, in fact, sought to investigate the practices of collective action and, at the same time, the processes of identity construction, and how these factors influence union-community relations, as well as the overall success of organising initiatives (Jiang & Korczynski, 2024). Furthermore, this perspective emphasises the importance of the development of ‘communities of struggle’ (Hamann & Türkmen, 2020; Però, 2020) for a bottom-up construction ofcommunity organising.
7 ORGANISING MIGRANT PLATFORM WORKERS IN LONDON
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