The Transnational Gender and Labor Working Group brings together researchers who are pushing the boundaries of how we conceptualize work and labor under capitalism.
The working group considers the significance of gender and its connections with race, ethnicity, class, family, sexuality, migration, citizenship, and geopolitics in shaping the jobs and opportunities people get and the ways in which labor is recognized and valued, both in law and in practice. Its work focuses on workers and sectors that are typically neglected in scholarly and policy analysis yet are indispensable to supporting people’s lives, families, and communities as part of the “caring economy.” This includes the daily activities of cleaning, cooking, and personal assistance that take place in private households, as well as diverse forms of emotional, affective, and service labor that have been the site of capitalist commodification in the hospitality, restaurant, food services, and institutionalized cleaning and care sectors as well as beauty, massage, therapeutic, entertainment, non-profit, and community support services.
Understanding how workers, collective organizations, and social movements work to change the dynamics of power and inequality in the everyday spaces of capitalist life is a core focus of the working group’s research activities. Given the long-standing exclusion of non-traditional work and workers from existing employment standards, labor rights, and social protections, the working group explores the creative practices of resistance and survival that working people cultivate to combat injustice and violence. Its work focuses on the development of alternative approaches to protecting people’s jobs, livelihoods, and communities through mutual aid and collective care. It also examines innovative approaches to building cross-sectoral and multi-racial solidarity both within and beyond organized labor, pushing the horizons of what is recognized as transformative labor organizing.
The Transnational Gender and Labor Working Group brings the intersectional and transnational dimensions of labor inequalities to the forefront. Its work offers an opportunity for gender and labor scholars to pursue interdisciplinary research collaborations that examine the multi-sited effects of capitalist processes of commodification and dispossession across contested borders. It cultivates collaborative relationships that connect students, faculty, and campus affiliates to community-based partners engaged in transformative projects for social change. The working group is a joint initiative with the UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE).
Header photo caption: International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) affiliates in Latin America gather for the Regional Forum on Social Security for Domestic Workers in Lima, Peru in November 2022. Photo taken by: Jennifer Jihye Chun.
