“Unionists Like the Others”? The Union Experience of Migrant Women and Daughters of Immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa
Type de matériel :
60
This article deals with social conditions of unionist commitment of migrant women from nothern African and subsaharan Africa and their daughters. French trade unionism is a field of reproduction and transformation of inegalitarian relations and plural power issues. Trade unionists did not have much concern for these plural power issues for a long time because of the working class unity ideal and the priority accorded to general interest over claims perceived as specific. Trade unionists women « with an immigrant background » met during fieldwork do not place gender nor ethnicity in the centre of their commitment explicitly. Does that means that resistance to class domination in trade unionism obliterates all other dimensions of their minoritarian situation ? This article argues that one can observe complex configurations of motives and conditions of action embedded in gender, ethnic, class relations and class fragmentation, combined in various ways according to situations. The meaning that these unionist women give to their commitment derives from their global life experience, which implies to explore dynamics of entangled ascriptions and their resistance to them. Finally, this article provides understanding on how these unionist women combine specific and general interests in trade union action.
Réseaux sociaux