Organising at the margins

Spaces of worker resistance in late twentieth century Britain

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6445282
AutoresPeg Griffin (0000-0002-6742-150X, Northumbria University, autor correspondente), Paul Griffin (0000-0002-1656-421X), Stephen Peck (0000-0001-5508-5601, Northumbria University)
Ano2025
Volume125
Páginas103461-103461
Data de publicação2025-11-27
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPolitical Geography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0962-6298 • E-ISSN: 1873-5096
EditoraElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.polgeo.2025.103461
OpenAlexW4416809778
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas41

Drawing from past examples of marginal worker organising, this paper engages with the diverse spatial politics of labour to reflect on questions of worker resistance within and beyond the workplace. This contribution connects with challenges faced by the trade union movement and ongoing academic commentary across labour geography and industrial relations more broadly. In doing so, we combine literature around worker organising margins and trade union orientations to shape our approach. Empirically, the paper draws upon two examples of worker organising at the margins; the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain) and Unemployed Workers’ Centres, arguing that their emergence in the 1970s and 1980s reflected an intersectional and dynamic spatial politics of labour organising. Through this analysis, and our use of collaborative historical geography methods, the paper argues that such organising at the margins illustrates how trade unions historically engaged beyond the workplace through matters of race, migration and unemployment. We illustrate how such an extension of trade union organising, beyond the workplace, shaped and contested more established trade union principles and grammars through a variety of uneven spaces, relations and practices. In doing so, we contribute to the theorising of spatial politics and resistance within and beyond the sub-discipline of labour geography.

Extension (predicate logic) · Human geography · Politics · Resistance (ecology) · Trade union · Variety (cybernetics) · Employment and Welfare Studies · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Industrial relations · Labor Movements and Unions