Dear all,
A quick reminder of the CFP and the upcoming deadline - 31 August 2017.
Best wishes,
Rutvica Andrijasevic
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Call for Papers Special Issue of Organization
Foreign Workers: On the Other Side of Sexual, Gendered, Political and Ethical Borders
Deadline: August 31, 2017
Special Issue Editors
Rutvica Andrijasevic, University of Bristol, UK
Carl Rhodes, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Kyoung-Hee Yu, UNSW Business School, Australia
What does it mean to be a foreign worker in today’s global economy? How does being foreign intersect with assumptions about gender and sexuality? What are the ethical and political ramifications of this for individuals,
organizations, labour markets and the state? These questions are borne out of a long history of the exclusion, abuse and discrimination of foreign workers, especially those who are women and sexual minorities. The conditions of the contemporary economy exacerbate
this as the expansion of mass transport technology and the liberalization of global labour markets has meant a vast expansion of worker mobility.
Employment regulations, work practices and the management of organizations are all influenced by assumptions and norms about sexuality, gender, race, and nationality (Acker, 2006). This has significant ramifications for
the lived experience of foreign workers (Essers, Benchop and Doorewaard 2010) and for the potential for their engagement in diverse organizing and resistance efforts (Yu, 2014). The ethical implications of
this relate to differences in how people are treated, the rights they are granted, the forms of discrimination they face, and the freedoms that are open to them. That such differences are organized on both sexual and gendered grounds,
risks situations where as foreign workers, women and LGBTI people can be exposed to ethical subjugation on account of their foreignness, and a dissolution of their rights on account of them being deemed secondary
to their male or heterosexual counterparts.
To be a foreigner is to have crossed an ethical as well as a political border, and hence can bear social stigma and exclusion. To be a foreigner is often associated with being a stranger, an outlander and an alien, without
access to the rights granted to locals. This is especially so when one’s foreignness is located in the postcolonial move from east to west, and south to north (Massey, 1998). Nowhere is this starker that in the long held conflation of control of access to
work (Fang et al., 2013), control of migration, and control of women’s bodies (Van Walsum and Spijkerboer, 2007).
Foreign workers are unequal as concerns employment, legal status, social standing, and labour market status. Cast as a double ‘other’, foreign workers who do not fit with white male heteronormative
expectations occupy a special ethical position, one where they are, as the etymological trace back to the Latin foranus suggests, on the outside. As has long been the case, foreigners, slaves, non-heterosexuals and women are excluded from the public
space of the polis, deemed not worthy of the same rights as others. This has not been without resistance and important forms of organizing and mobilization that have been motivated and carried out by foreign workers. This includes the domestic workers movement
(Anderson, 2010), international framework agreements on safety in garment factories (Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015), workers’ centres (Fine, 2006), and Justice for Janitors (Erickson et al., 2002).
We are calling for papers that consider individual differences, context specific locations experiences and dynamic processes through which the sexed and gendered category of the foreign worker is constructed, enacted
and resisted. These interests extend to how the category of the foreign worker varies historically both due to the changes in law, government policy, socio-cultural norms. Of central concern is how such changes influence work and employment practices, as well
as how they are constitutive of workers’ subjectivities. The ethico-political implications of this are significant in terms of exclusion, discrimination, incorporation as well as resistance and mobilization. Papers might consider, but are not limited to, empirical
and theoretical consideration of the following topics:
Submission
Papers may be submitted electronically from July 31, 2017 until August 31 2017 (final deadline) to SAGE Track at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/organization
Papers should be no more than 8000 words, excluding references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard review process. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines published in Organization
and on the journal’s website:
http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal200981/manuscriptSubmission.
Further Information
Rutvica Andrijasevic, University of Bristol, UK ([log in to unmask])
Carl Rhodes, University of Technology Sydney, Australia ([log in to unmask])
Kyoung-Hee Yu, UNSW Business School, Australia ([log in to unmask])
References
Acker, J. (2006). Inequality Regimes Gender, Class, And Race In Organizations. Gender & society, 20(4), 441-464.
Anderson, B. (2010). Mobilizing migrants, making citizens: migrant domestic workers as political agents. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(1), 60-74.
Erickson, C. L., Fisk, C. L., Milkman, R., Mitchell, D. J. B., & Wong, K. (2002). Justice for Janitors in Los Angeles: Lessons from three rounds of negotiations. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 40(3),
543-567.
Essers, C., Benschop, Y., and Doorewaard, H. (2010). Female ethnicity: Understanding Muslim immigrant businesswomen in the Netherlands.Gender, Work & Organization, 17(3), 320-339.
Fang, T., Samnani, A-K., Novicevic, M.M. and Bing, M.N. (2013) Liability-Of-Foreignness Effects On Job Success Of Immigrant Job Seekers.Journal of World Business 48(1): 98-109.
Fine, J. (2006). Worker Centers : Organizing Communities At The Edge Of The Dream. Ithaca: ILR Press/Cornell University Press.
Massey, D. S. (1998). International Migration and National Development. In D. S. Massey (Ed.), Worlds In Motion : Understanding International Migration At The End Of The Millenium (pp. xiv, 362 p.). Oxford ; New
York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.
Reinecke, J., and Donaghey, J. (2015). After Rana Plaza: Building coalitional power for labour rights between unions and (consumption-based) social movement organisations. Organization, 22(5), 720-740.
Van Walsum, S and Spijkerboer, T.(Eds.). (2007). Women And Immigration Law: New Variations On Classical Feminist Themes. London: Routledge.
Yu K-H. (2014) Organizing immigrants: meaning generation in the community, Work, Employment and Society, 28(3): 355 – 371