Abstract

While workers movements have been largely phased out and considered out-dated in most parts of the world during the 1990s, the 21st century has seen a surge in new and unprecedented forms of strikes and workers organisations.

The collection of essays in this book, spanning countries across global South and North, provides an account of strikes and working class resistance in the 21st century. Through original case studies, the book looks at the various shades of workers’ movements, analysing different forms of popular organisation as responses to new social and economic conditions, such as restructuring of work and new areas of investment.
How to analyse the wave of strikes occurring around the world in the early 21^st century? What are their causes, forms, and results – and what do they reveal about specific socioeconomic constellations? Is there potential for solidarity among workers in different world regions, based, for instance, on similar policies of informalisation? This volume is a perfect starting point for discussion.
Nicole Mayer-Ahuja, Professor of Sociology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
This book is a powerful reminder of the continuing widespread resistance to capitalism despite the global economic crisis. Bringing together a large amount of studies from Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe, including less well-researched countries such as Indonesia and Burkina Faso, the authors emphasise the new dynamics of class struggle across the globe. A must-read for everyone interested in resisting exploitation and transforming capitalism!
Andreas Bieler, Professor of Political Economy, University of Nottingham
Madhumita Dutta is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the Ohio State University, USA.

Jörg Nowak is a Marie Curie Researcher at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Peter Birke is Researcher at the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI), at the University of Göttingen, Germany. He has published more specifically on the global social movements after the 2009 financial and debt crisis. Birke is editor of the journal Social History Online.

Encouraging, honest and meticulously researched, this book is a good starting point for anyone wanting to understand the motivations, strategies, objectives and potential of working class struggle around the planet.

This edited volume on labour strikes covering working class struggles in Asia, Africa and Latin America is a pioneering attempt in the area of labour studies. Re-politicizing labour strikes on a global scale is a timely project that this volume strives to achieve. Readers of labour studies, social movements and social change should definitely pay attention to it.
Pun Ngai, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong
This book will certainly be a global reference in the studies on the new trends of workers' resistance struggles in the face of current forms of capitalist accumulation. It offers a fantastic panorama of strikes and other forms of workers fighting in a wide range of countries in all regions of the world. It has the merit of highlighting the recent phenomenon of world wide resurgence of workers' strikes.
Roberto Véras de Oliveira, Associate Professor, Federal University of Paraíba