Bricolage in labor organizing practices: Spanish and Italian migrant activists in Berlin

Abstract

This article analyzes how Southern European workers create bricolage by combining creatively organized practices of collective action, such as those of conventional labor unions, with self-created practices when facing oppressive labor relations and widespread downgrading of social mobility. We compare two cases of networks formed by Spanish and Italian migrant workers in Berlin: the Grupo de Acción Sindical and Berlin Migrant Strikers. Drawing on an ethnographic study of these groups, the article argues that the networks have different logics of action and political strategies. Their dissimilarities are manifested in different outcomes and organizational dimensions. Key factors include their founding members' social and activist backgrounds and leaders' countries of origin. It can be argued that, through these networks, migrants produce and reproduce political practices and collective actions, shaping a transnational social space that connects migrants and non-migrant individuals and organizations from both origin and destination countries.

Struggling in pandemic times: Migrant women's virtual political organization during the COVID‐19 crisis in Spain

“…Nevertheless, the pandemic has meant a qualitative leap in the leadership of these associations in terms of representativeness and visibility of their political and working rights, compared to the pre‐pandemic stage, when the main protagonists were pro‐migrant associations. During COVID‐19, they opted for self‐organization, converging in the interracial, interethnic, feminist and decolonial collective action #RegularizacionYa, generating socially creative responses through organizational bricolage (Castellani & Roca, 2022 ; Phillimore et al, 2019 ) with the resources accumulated in their networks and designing effective strategies of alliances among migrant associations and other civil society groups. In this sense, these associations are analogous to community unionism (Roca & Martín‐Díaz, 2017 ) making bricolage with elements from their cultural backgrounds and features of the host society in order to adapt to new circumstances.…”

“…These studies look at the broader relationship between pro‐migrant and migrant associations in the political field. To look into migrant women political and organizational practices during the pandemic, it is useful as well to include the notion of bricolage understood as the ability to find collaborative solutions to challenging situations, combining available resources (economic, social, cultural, political) and adapting them to a particular socio‐historical context (Castellani & Roca, 2022 ). Organizational bricolage is a process that generates knowledge and practices that counter the taken‐for‐granted premises and have the potential of political transformation.…”

The Value of Netnography for Research in HRD

“…This form of grassroots and collective learning and development for marginalized members of the labour market would otherwise have been invisible or undetected. Collective action to address language deficiencies and unfamiliar cultural codes was common also in the experience of Southern European precarious migrants studied by Castellani and Roca (2022).…”

“…We further argue that Netnography provides HRD researchers with opportunities to access ‘voices’ that might otherwise be inadvertently silenced by traditional organisational research. Marginalised and hidden voices might be those of migrants (Castellani & Roca, 2022; Janta & Ladkin, 2013), illiterate precarious workers (Parth et al, 2021), protesters and activists outside mainstream networks (Keshtiban et al, 2021), or women and ethnic minority workers carrying out remote work (Akemu & Abdelnour, 2020). An example of the potential of the Netnography in such circumstances is Janta and Ladkin (2013) who examined online employment practices in the hospitality sector in international migration contexts.…”

Leaving Spain

“…One area that has attracted special attention is Spanish migrants' involvement in activism, including transnational solidarity networks (e.g. 'Marea Granate', 'Oficina Precaria') (Tiburcio Jiménez, 2017) and creative expressions of protest (Castellani & Roca, 2021). In their study on solidarity networks among Spanish migrants in the UK and Germany, Roca and Martin-Diaz (2016) introduced the term 'Interstitial Trade Unionism' to describe activist initiatives aimed at supporting foreign labourers.…”