Solidarity and Contentiousness in Migrant Worker Mobilisation: Syndicalist Unionisation in Sweden

Abstract

This article analyses the mobilisation of migrant workers in SAC, the main syndicalist trade union in Sweden. It theorises mobilisation and solidarity from a labour process perspective and, based on ethnography, identifies accessibility , contentiousness and belonging as key mechanisms to explain the union’s form of mobilisation. By drawing on the class struggle unionism framework, it conceptualises two strategies – of ‘collapsing servicing and organising’ and ‘participation follows action’ – to explain why and how SAC is successful in its mobilisation efforts. It shows that SAC’s confrontational methods mobilise a migrant worker community where workers’ intersubjective experiences of migration and precariousness shape solidarity and build associational power. The article concludes that SAC’s mobilisation of migrant workers is groundbreaking in a Swedish context and that class struggle unionism has plenty to offer also to other unions.