Michael W. McCann and George I. Lovell
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226679877
- eISBN:
- 9780226680071
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226680071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Employment Law
Union by Law develops a theoretically sophisticated analysis about the contradictory power of law through a historical study of Filipino American labor rights activists. Beginning with the US ...
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Union by Law develops a theoretically sophisticated analysis about the contradictory power of law through a historical study of Filipino American labor rights activists. Beginning with the US invasion of the Philippines in 1898, the study tracks the experiences of Filipino migrant workers struggling for democratic egalitarian transformation in both the Philippine homeland and the US metropole over nearly a century. The narrative history builds on four core themes. First, the analysis situates the Filipino workers’ struggles within the hierarchical context of American “racial capitalist” empire. Second, the book contends that this hierarchical order was governed not by a uniformly liberal legal system, but rather by a patchwork of liberal, repressive, and hybrid legal practices targeting different subject groups and enacted through variable administrative forms. Filipino American laborers, like other racialized imported colonial populations, were routinely subjected to repressive legal violence at work, in social life, and in politics. Third, the book chronicles copious episodes of legal rights mobilization politics enacted by several generations of Filipino union activists struggling to challenge racial, capitalist, and imperial hierarchies. A devastating Supreme Court ruling against the workers in Wards Cove v. Atonio and triumphant wrongful death civil claims against the Marcos regime in 1989 epitomize the complex fates of these campaigns. Finally, the narrative history traces the long development of a radical oppositional rights consciousness that animated the labor activists’ struggles against, with, and beyond law. The book concludes by theorizing in general terms about legal mobilization politics amidst hegemonic racial capitalist empire.Less
Union by Law develops a theoretically sophisticated analysis about the contradictory power of law through a historical study of Filipino American labor rights activists. Beginning with the US invasion of the Philippines in 1898, the study tracks the experiences of Filipino migrant workers struggling for democratic egalitarian transformation in both the Philippine homeland and the US metropole over nearly a century. The narrative history builds on four core themes. First, the analysis situates the Filipino workers’ struggles within the hierarchical context of American “racial capitalist” empire. Second, the book contends that this hierarchical order was governed not by a uniformly liberal legal system, but rather by a patchwork of liberal, repressive, and hybrid legal practices targeting different subject groups and enacted through variable administrative forms. Filipino American laborers, like other racialized imported colonial populations, were routinely subjected to repressive legal violence at work, in social life, and in politics. Third, the book chronicles copious episodes of legal rights mobilization politics enacted by several generations of Filipino union activists struggling to challenge racial, capitalist, and imperial hierarchies. A devastating Supreme Court ruling against the workers in Wards Cove v. Atonio and triumphant wrongful death civil claims against the Marcos regime in 1989 epitomize the complex fates of these campaigns. Finally, the narrative history traces the long development of a radical oppositional rights consciousness that animated the labor activists’ struggles against, with, and beyond law. The book concludes by theorizing in general terms about legal mobilization politics amidst hegemonic racial capitalist empire.
