Countering Hegemonic Human Rights Norms through Migrant Labour Organising: The Case of Migrant Justice

Abstract

This article analyses undocumented migrant labour organising in a complicated context and site, the Vermont dairy industry, in relation to Tanya Basok's concept of “counter-hegemonic human rights”. Taking migrant rights organisation Migrant Justice in Burlington, Vermont as a case study, this work examines migrant labour organising that calls upon notions of human rights for economic migrants in the USA. Migrant Justice works through commodity chain labour organising that transcends the scale of the state, calls on moral geographies of consumption and production, and autonomously redistributes not just capital, but power, from the corporation down to workers. An analysis of literature on migrant human rights in relation to labour organising will lead us to problematise mainstream human rights discourse, explore alternative conceptions of rights, and understand the liberatory components of the “counter-hegemonic” employment of human rights by subversive actors, which may truly hold the potentials that mainstream human rights discourse claims.