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Regimes, Resistance and Reforms: Comparing Workers' Politics in the Automobile Industry in China and India

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dc.contributor.authorNair, Manjusha
dc.contributor.authorFriedman, Eli
dc.date.accessioned2022-03-23T18:21:19Z
dc.date.available2022-03-23T18:21:19Z
dc.date.issued2021-01
dc.description.abstractThe automobile industry in China was shaken by an unprecedented upsurge of labour unrest in 2010, beginning with the much-discussed wildcat strike at the Nanhai Honda transmission plant in Guangdong province. While worker activism in auto plants in India was not as concentrated as in China’s 2010 strike wave, the period 2009–2017 witnessed twenty-seven strikes nationwide, indicating a significant uptick after the global recession. The optimism that regarded the escalation of labour unrest as indicative of a global labour movement emerging from the Global South has died down. This is an appropriate moment to ask the question: Why did these protests not materialise into something more? Existing explanations in China tend to focus on the regime characteristics. In this article, we undertake a much-needed comparative analysis to explore the failure of these protests. We argue that their failure to sustain their momentum, let alone become a global movement, must be understood in the context of the structures and temporality of capitalism. While we show that there were regime-based divergences and national characteristics in each case, we also show the striking global convergence both in the ways that the protests materialised and how the states responded.en_US
dc.identifier.citationNair, M., & Friedman, E. (2021). Regimes, resistance and reforms: Comparing workers' politics in the automobile industry in China and India. Global Labour Journal, 12(1), pp. 18-38.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/111151
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMcMaster University Library Pressen_US
dc.relation.doihttps://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v12i1.4256en_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/*
dc.subjectlabour resistanceen_US
dc.subjecttemporary worken_US
dc.subjectdemocracyen_US
dc.subjectneo-liberalismen_US
dc.subjectChinaen_US
dc.subjectIndiaen_US
dc.titleRegimes, Resistance and Reforms: Comparing Workers' Politics in the Automobile Industry in China and Indiaen_US
dc.typearticleen_US
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/111149
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schema.accessibilityFeaturereadingOrderen_US
schema.accessibilityFeaturestructuralNavigationen_US
schema.accessibilityFeaturetaggedPDFen_US
schema.accessibilityHazardnoneen_US
schema.accessibilitySummaryAccessible pdfen_US

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