Based on extensive original research, this book examines the challenges confronting trade unions in the global South, by focusing on trade union struggles in Sri Lanka under neo-liberal globalisation. It centres on movement politics of unions; explains union capacities to mobilise workers as a part of broad counter movement; and specifies worker struggles in Sri Lanka. The author identifies key dimensions of variation in the approaches taken by oppositional groupings, in particular unions, other labour organisations and the labour movement, and locates those variations in a larger theoretical context. Three case studies on trade unions in tea plantations, garment factories and among the nurses show how these theoretical dimensions operate in practice, and the consequences for the sort of opposition that is (and is not) created. The book contributes to the on-going debate on social movement unionism, and it also reveals their gaps in terms of addressing how class injustices are mediated through ethno-nationalist projects reproducing ethnic and gender hierarchies. It acknowledges the diversity of experiences and forms of resistance in the global South and critically engages with issues of gender, ethnicity and labour internationalism, providing a useful contribution to studies on South Asian Politics as well as Labour and Development Studies.

Workers’ Education in the Global South explores how radical workers’ education in South Africa has been shaped by its location within labour and other social movements as well as local and global political economies, and identifies tensions emerging from new discourses of workplace training.

Popular struggles in the global south suggest the need for the development of new and politically enabling categories of analysis, and new ways of understanding contemporary social movements. This book shows how social movements in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East politicize development in an age of neoliberal hegemony.

An analysis of labour internationalism that explores in depth the experience of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR). This book will interest anyone concerned with the role of labour in the global economy, economic justice, global social movements, and internationalism.

Against the background of the global economic crisis since 2007/2008 and increasing inequality across the world, the Global South has experienced widespread, large-scale industrial action, including in countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa, which had been hailed as the new growth engines of the global political economy as part of the so-called BRICS. This volume systematically evaluates how the new forms of labour mobilization witnessed in the past ten years responded to the predominance of the informality-precarity complex of industrial relations and what conclusions can be drawn for potentially successful strategies against exploitation in the future. Can we identify a convergence of new approaches across the Global South, or do we witness an ongoing fragmentation of actors, models and strategies? In addressing this question, consideration is given to issues of class as well as gender and race. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Globalizations.

This book offers an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to thinking about inequality, and to understanding how inequality is produced and reproduced in the global South. Without the safety net of the various Northern welfare states, inequality in the global South is not merely a socio-economic problem, but an existential threat to the social contract that underpins the democratic state and society itself. Only a response that is firmly grounded in the context of the global South can hope to address this problem. This collection brings together scholars from across the globe, with a particular focus on the global South, to address broad thematic areas such as the conceptual and methodological challenges of measuring inequality; the political economy of inequality in the global South; inequality in work, households and the labour market; and inequalities in land, spaces and cities. The book concludes by suggesting alternatives for addressing inequality in the global South and around the world. The pioneering ideas and theories put forward by this volume make it essential reading for students and researchers of global inequality across the fields of sociology, economics, law, politics, global studies and development studies.

This book reimagines the pleasures of sports and provides a critical perspective from the Global South. Analysing the spread of sports markets in Sri Lanka along with a range of struggles, the book highlights how the celebration of ‘sportive nationalism,’ promoting sports markets in the Global South reinforces patriarchal ethno-nationalist authoritarian sports cultures. By explaining how the realm of social reproduction involving households and communities is integral for play and sports, the book challenges the market-driven ‘sports and development’ agenda while arguing for a ‘sports commons.’ By foregrounding issues of justice and care, the book highlights how struggles for recognition, redistribution and representation are central to reimagining sports within an alternative notion of work, play and resistance.

The political economy landscape has shifted as multinational corporations increase their investment efforts, changing the geographies of extraction. The contributors make the argument for the need of new theoretical perspectives anchored in critical political economy to address structural dynamics in the global industry.

This cutting-edge Handbook argues for social protection to be situated in a wider system of social welfare and development programmes for low- and middle-income countries. Focusing on the role of citizens and communities in enhancing human development, it explores how welfare systems are unfolding in diverse contexts across the global South.

The politics of claiming rights and strategies of mobilisation exhibited by marginalised social groups lie at the heart of this volume. Theoretically, the authors aims to foster a holistic and multi-faceted understanding of how social and economic justice is claimed, either through formal, corporatist or organised mechanisms, or through ad hoc, informal, or individualised practices, as well as the implications of these distinctive activist strategies. The collection emphasises both the difficulties of political mobilisation and the distinctive methods employed by various social groups across a variety of contexts to respond and overcome these challenges. Crucially, the authors’ approach involves a conceptualisation of social movements and local mobilisation in terms of the language of rights and justice claims-making through more organised as well as everyday political practices. In so doing, the book bridges the literature on contentious politics, the politics of claiming social justice, and everyday politics of resistance.