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Invitation to ESRC Seminar Series: Migrants, Workplace and Community: Learning from Innovations in Civil Society SEMINAR 2: *New forms of organizing and self-organizing of migrant workers across community and workplace.** **Lessons from the US, Europe and the Global South* This seminar will consider international approaches to community based organising in order to understand how different methodologies are applied to best effect in drawing in new groups of workers. Thursday 23 June 2016: 10.30am-6pm University of Leeds Business School, Meadows Teaching Room 2, Leeds, LS2 9JT *Programme* 10.15:Coffee and registration 10.30:Welcome 10.45-11.45: Dr Jenny Chen: Learning for jobs: student workers in Chinaenforcing labour 11.45-12.45: Professor Jane Wills: The strengths and weaknesses of community organising in relation to labour: lessons from the living wage campaign in London and beyond 12.45-1.45: Lunch 1.45-2.45: Dr Janice Fine: Standards in partnership with civil society: can co-production succeed where the state alone has failed? 2.45-3.45: Dr Jane McAlevey: Building high participation organizations: whole worker organizing. 3.45-4pm: Coffee 4pm-5pm: Carlos Saavedra: Movement building and community organizing in the US migrant rights movements. 5pm-6pm: Discussion 6pm: Drinks and dinner NOTE: places are limited. You must register by emailing [log in to unmask] *_________________________________________________________________* *Civil society is a heterogeneous field comprising an array of diverse organisations, groups, networks, associations and initiatives. It is often attributed salvationist functions whether from a neoliberal or Gramscian perspective at the time when the state’s role and presence is changing and shrinking.*Yet these debates have limited empirical grounding and research documenting the role, challenges and opportunities of specific civil society initiatives is fragmented. Furthermore, academic research tends to see the realm of civil society and ‘the community’ as analytically separate from other important arenas such as the workplace. Migrant workers are a valuable vantage point to explore current transformations in civil society and its role in fostering social justice, social cohesion and a fairer society. They perform an important role in contemporary society and economy yet they are constructed as one of the key contemporary problems in current public and political discourse. Crucially, there are sectors of British society that are working, often at the grassroots level to build cohesion from the bottom-up in communities and workplaces. This series will foreground, reflect on and theorise the interface of workplace and communitycollective actors (e.g. between religious and labour organisations through broad-based coalitions), paying particular attention to the question of migrant workers. It will draw on interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to provide a deeper understanding of the factors that make civil society initiatives ‘work’. -- Professor Jane Holgate Professor of Work and Employment Relations Work and Employment Relations Division Leeds University Business School 31 Lyddon Terrace (room 2.05) University of Leeds LS2 9JT email: [log in to unmask] Mobile: 07960 798399 -- Professor Jane Holgate Professor of Work and Employment Relations Work and Employment Relations Division Leeds University Business School 31 Lyddon Terrace (room 2.05) University of Leeds LS2 9JT email: [log in to unmask] Mobile: 07960 798399