Special issue: labour unions in the Global South in times of neoliberalism/Les syndicats du Sud global à l’ère néolibérale

ABSTRACT In this introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Labour unions in the Global South in times of neoliberalism’, we argue that trade unions have emerged from a historical specific context, i.e. a specific setting of relations of production. We understand trade unionism not as a fixed institutional and organizational form, but as a tool that provides manifold possibilities of adaption. Studying the forms it takes and the processes of its adaption, also outside its milieu of historical origin, allows us to widen our understanding of the organization and mobilization of workers worldwide, including those who do not work in secured forms of wage labour.