The world seen from a taxi : students-migrants-workers in the global multiplication of labour

• Published in: Critical psychology (Lawrence & Wishart) Vol. 29; no. December 2009; pp. 425 - 444
• Main Author: Neilson, Brett
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Palgrave Macmillan UK 01.12.2009; Palgrave Macmillan
• Subjects: Australia; Automobile safety; Borders; Citizenship; Civil rights; Criminal investigations; Demonstrations & protests; Foreign policy; Foreign students; Foreign workers; Globalisation; Ideology; Immigrants; Immigration; India; International students; Labor unions; Labour; Labour conditions; Labour demands; Labour market; Labour relations; Labour standards; Migrants; Migration; Mobility; Multiplication; Original Article; Political issues; Political power; Political socialisation; Politics; Power structure; Social Sciences; Stabbings; Strikes; Student employment; Student rights; Students; Subjectivity; Taxi drivers; Taxicabs; Trade unionism; Trade unions; Unions; Workers; Working conditions; Australia; migration; higher education; differential inclusion; labour struggles; borders; citizenship
• ISSN: 1755-6341; 1755-635X
• DOI: 10.1057/sub.2009.23

In April 2008, after the stabbing of one of their fellow workers, taxi drivers in the Australian city of Melbourne, many of them from India, blockaded the city. They chanted, removed their shirts, refused the ministrations of police and government, and through their actions forced an acceptance of their demands. The article takes this event as a point of departure to analyse new forms of political practice, experience and subjectivity that emerge in a world where international borders are no longer the only or necessarily the most relevant barriers for dividing or restricting the mobility of labour. Of particular interest is the fact that most of the drivers who participated in the strike are also international students. At stake is the emergence of a new kind of labour politics whose organisational forms are at once more flexible and more unstable than those of the trade union movement. [Author abstract]