The Governmentalization of the Trade Union and the Potential of Union-Based Resistance. The Case of Undocumented Migrant Domestic Workers in the Netherlands Making Rights Claims

Ambivalence about rights is well known: rights may both challenge existing injustices while simultaneously re-enforcing sovereign regulatory control over citizens. In this article, we focus on the paradox that potentially radical and transformative claims to rights are made at a site – civil society...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social & legal studies 2018-10, Vol.27 (5), p.596-615
Main Authors: Eleveld, Anja, Van Hooren, Franca
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambivalence
Case studies
Citizens
Civil society
Domestic service
Governmentality
Labor unions
Migrant workers
Radicalism
Resistance
Rights
Undocumented immigrants
Unionization
Visibility
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Summary:Ambivalence about rights is well known: rights may both challenge existing injustices while simultaneously re-enforcing sovereign regulatory control over citizens. In this article, we focus on the paradox that potentially radical and transformative claims to rights are made at a site – civil society – that under liberal governmentality has increasingly become a site of government. By exploring the unionization of undocumented migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Netherlands, we aim to show how rights claims are shaped and controlled by civil society. Using the analytical category of (in)visibility, the case study discloses the dualistic role of the union. On the one hand, the union operated as a site of resistance supporting undocumented MDWs to make their rights claims. On the other hand, it operated as a site of government of the same undocumented MDWs by selectively promoting work-related rights claims and excluding more radical claims for the right to come and go.
ISSN:0964-6639
1461-7390
DOI:10.1177/0964663917725145