Global Labor History

How is the ‘Global South’ conceptualized within Global Labor History, and what tensions arise from this framing? In what ways does a focus on locally grounded labor histories challenge and expand our understanding of global processes? To what extent has Global Labor History’s global orientation influenced its connection to public engagement? This talk explores these questions by examining three foundational elements of global labor history—global, labor, and history—focusing on how each shapes the discipline’s boundaries, assumptions, and potential exclusions, particularly at its margins. First, it interrogates the concept of the Global South within Global Labor History, highlighting its lack of clear conceptualization and the tension it creates between global narratives and more localized research. This tension is explored through the lens of scope and scale, a theme that runs throughout the talk. Turning to “labor,” the discussion challenges Global Labor History’s predominant focus on migration and movement by incorporating place-based labor into the conversation, offering new insights into global labor dynamics and reshaping our understanding of “the global” in relation to fixed, local scales. Finally, the talk examines the connection between Global Labor History and public history, reflecting on the gap between theoretical frameworks of Global Labor History and its practical engagement with the public, particularly in terms of how labor histories are communicated and understood outside academic spaces.

The phenomenon of labour takes the character of a prism. Labour is thereby always context dependent and constituted through the actions of all protagonists involved in any labour relationship. On the basis of three case studies in colonial German East Africa – the construction of the Central Railway (1905–1916), the Otto Plantation in Kilossa (1907–1916) and the palaeontological Tendaguru Expedition (1909–1911) – labour and labour relations are analysed. The focus lies on hitherto neglected actors and groups of actors of labour in the colonial context of East Africa. These were especially German companies and their staff, white subaltern railway sub-contractors and labour recruiters, Indian skilled workers and (qualified) East African workers. Furthermore, all three sites of labour proved to have their individual logics and characteristics. But all of them were in tension between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’, coercion and voluntariness, machine and manual labour, skilled and unskilled labour, reproductive and wage labour, as well as between black and white.

The gender pay gap in South Africa has greatly reduced since the implementation of the Employment Equity Act in 1998. However, there is still a pay gap that cannot be sufficiently explained and addressed by government leaders and scholars. Scholars, policymakers, the radical left, and feminists have carefully highlighted and addressed what is considered to be the major causes, such as segregation of women, women's stereotypes, marginalization of women, wage penalties due to time away from work, child nurturing responsibilities given to women, and inequality in salaries and remunerations. However, the World Bank reported that from 2007 on, the gender pay gap in South Africa was no longer showing any sign of reduction. It was stagnant and thereafter oscillating. As such the purpose of this research is to investigate the causes of the stagnation and the oscillation, and to provide recommendations. Theoretical Framework: This research used multivariate analysis theory to make further contributions on the causes of gender pay inequality in South Africa in order to address the stagnation and oscillation of the existing pay gap. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research method used is qualitative approach. The research design comprises men and women who are already in the work industry in both private and public sector. Findings: This research found that gender pay gap in South Africa is caused by women's family-career crisis as a main contributor, followed by interests and personality traits, equality of opportunity and career selection. Research Implications: This research paper gives light to further research in Women's family-career crisis as it seems to be the major contributor to gender pay gap in South Africa. The assessment of how impactful family-career crisis is on gender pay gap is also essential in order to understand the magnitude of it on gender pay gap in South Africa. Originality/Value: This research paper found significant causes of gender pay gap such as 'family career-crisis' that shows to heavily contribute to the gender pay in South Africa. This might further give clarity to the governments on the existence of gender pay gap. Moreover this research may help in redefining the government policies on the approach of gender pay gap.

Over the past six hundred years an increasingly connected and competitive global economy has had tremendous consequences for how people have made a living. It has brought unprecedented opportunities for many, but also massive dispossession of livelihoods and natural habitats to this very day. People have moved towards agricultural frontiers and industrial centres in growing numbers and over increasing distances for work. Slavery and other coerced labour regimes have shaped persistent social inequalities, racial discrimination and exclusion. Confronted with exploitation, disenfranchisement, gender inequalities, racism and xenophobia, workers have tried to improve their position either individually or collectively. Drawing on core research at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, this series explores the connectivity between changes in work and shifting labour relations, evolving social and economic inequalities that result from or are connected to these changes, and individual as well as collective responses to these inequalities. Situating these historical dynamics within the context of an unfolding global economy that externalizes social and environmental costs, the series aims for global comparisons across time, space and scale to bring out how evolving social inequalities are connected to the development of work and labour relations, and how these histories may help to understand the causes of inequalities in the present. By combining broad diachronic, transnational and transcontinental comparisons, synthetic overviews and exemplary case studies, the series offers a conversant global perspective on how work and the social and economic relations and contexts in which it is performed, has shaped and defined our world.

9S ocialist Encountersa tt he School of Friendship Education is our principal instrumenti nf ormingt he New Man; am an, liberated fromo ld ideas,f rom am entality that was contaminated by the colonial-capitalist mindset;aman educated by the ideas and practiceso fs ocialism.¹ Mozambican President Samora Machel OpenAccess. ©2 021M arcia C. Schenck and FranciscaR aposo, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsA ttribution 4.0 International License.

This article argues that class formation and labour radicalism in the industrial cities of colonial India need to be located in connected histories of workers, which go beyond analysis of single industries. It shows that the horizontal mobility of workers in early twentieth-century Calcutta was a result of a pervasiveness of casual work, both among the ‘unskilled’ and the skilled. Skill levels and occupations were crucial in defining the boundaries of not one, as is frequently posited, but several labour pools. It was in this form that the reserve army of labour was ever-present in the city, which gave workers networks beyond one workplace, one neighborhood and frequently, even one industry. The special role of segments of skilled workers has rarely been studied in relation to labour militancy and politics. The article sustains an emphasis on the role of industrial centres, such as the docklands, through which a high degree of interconnectedness across industrial processes in terms ...

This article argues that class formation and labour radicalism in the industrial cities of colonial India need to be located in connected histories of workers, which go beyond analysis of single industries. It shows that the horizontal mobility of workers in early twentieth-century Calcutta was a result of a pervasiveness of casual work, both among the 'unskilled' and the skilled. Skill levels and occupations were crucial in defining the boundaries of not one, as is frequently posited, but several labour pools. It was in this form that the reserve army of labour was ever-present in the city, which gave workers networks beyond one workplace, one neighborhood and frequently, even one industry. The special role of segments of skilled workers has rarely been studied in relation to labour militancy and politics. The article sustains an emphasis on the role of industrial centres, such as the docklands, through which a high degree of interconnectedness across industrial processes in terms of shared occupations and skills across several industries and neighborhoods, can be excavated and mapped onto episodes of labour militancy. The neighbourhood, the trade unions, and nationalist events have all hitherto been studied to understand the shaping of workers' protest. This article, by contrast, focuses on other crucial elements: the workplace and the industrial processes, which tied workers together in concrete, everyday, and proximate relationships.

The chapter is a synopsis of my MA thesis, a historical ethnography on the spatial practices and housing of Mozambican workers in East Germany (1979-1990). Building on archival documents and oral history, the research depicts the tactics and forms of resistance by which Mozambican workers transformed the poor and degrading environment of the company dormitories into a home—and sometimes even into a place of dignity, safety, and youthfulness.


MA thesis in Critical Urbanisms: "'We Are Workers, Not Inmates!': The Politics of Space in Mozambican Workers’ Company Dormitories in East Germany (1979-1990)

ZusammenfassungDie Modernisierung der Faïencerie de Quimper, eines keramischen Mittelbetriebes in der Bretagne, ist ein Beispiel für die Re-Vergemeinschaftung der Betriebe. Die frühere Sozialverfassung des Betriebes, die durch die starke regionale Verankerung, die Produktorientheit und die klassenmäßig orientierten Arbeiterkollektive in diesem Betrieb geprägt war, fand in der dauerhaften Unrentabilität des Betriebes ihre Grenzen. Ausgehend von den zur Herstellung des spezifischen Produktes des Betriebes notwendigen Elementen der alten Sozialverfassung und durch die Konstitution des neuen Betriebsleiters als ,Großen‘ 1 (i. S. Bourdieus) gelang es, eine neue betriebswirtschaftliche Strategie zu realisieren, die dem Betrieb eine dauerhafte soziale und ökonomische Basis gab. Die ,soziale Revolution‘, die sich in dieser Umbruchphase in dem Betrieb abspielte, steht im Zentrum des Artikels. Es werden auf diese Art die Ambivalenzen der betrieblichen Re-Vergemeinschaftungsstrategien, wie sie...

Die Arbeit der indischen Organisation Gram Vikas zeigt, dass Social Entrepreneurs Institutionen nicht nur verändern, sondern auch neu schaffen. Diese Institutional Entrepreneurs können zentrale Akteure für einen institutionellen Wandel sein.

Esta resenha analisa algumas das principais ideias do livro de Michael Zeuske, Esclavitud: una historia de la humanidad (2018), sob a perspectiva da História Global do Trabalho e de alguns estudos que relacionam escravidão, trabalho livre, trabalho forçado e capitalismo.

1 ABSTRACT Istanbul has always been the core of different civi lizations in history. As the capital city of the Ot toman Empire, Istanbul's modern place within the world ec onomy began in the late eighteenth century with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the growth of modern European capitalism. Throughout its hist ory, Istanbul has played a primary role in its region. I n the 19th century and into the 1920s, the city was a center for transportation, bonded warehouses, trade and st ock exchange.

My essay “The Promise and Challenges of Global Labor History” in issue 82 (Fall 2012) received commentaries from five colleagues. In this reply I focus on seven central issues: the ambiguities of commodification; the contested notion of “capitalism”; the concept of class; household labor; the need for comparative approaches; the newness of Global Labor History; and its prospects in the coming years.

Die Arbeit der indischen Organisation Gram Vikas zeigt, dass Social Entrepreneurs Institutionen nicht nur verändern, sondern auch neu schaffen. Diese Institutional Entrepreneurs können zentrale Akteure für einen institutionellen Wandel sein.

The paper deals with fiancialisation in the German chemical and pharmaceutical industry, focussed on Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF. Important restructuring in each of these companies is justified by financial markets’ requirements. However, that restructuring has not been enforced by institutional investors or financial markets, it was driven by dominant management coalitions referring to financial rationality. Therefore the outcome of financialisation of rather similar companies has been extremely heterogeneous. The most important general outcome was the end of the technology based integrated chemical and pharmaceutical company as a paradigm for the core of the industry. An important social outcome was the increased heterogenity and differentiation of wage and labour conditions where homogeneous standards based on one overall collective agreement used to be in force, with only upward variation by companies. As decisions on what financialisation may be in big companies are a matter of st...

1 ABSTRACT Istanbul has always been the core of different civilizations in history. As the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul's modern place within the world economy began in the late eighteenth century with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the growth of ...

Ein zulässiger Vergleich? – Einst schrieb die Marienthal-Studie über die Auswirkung von Arbeitslosigkeit auf eine Region Geschichte. Vor über zwei Jahren wurde wieder eine Fabrik in Gramatneusiedl geschlossen. Erneut wurde eine Studie in Auftrag gegeben. Ein Lokalaugenschein.

Ports are essential infrastructural elements in terms of their role as an integrator of national economy with the world economy. They affect the efficient use of maritime transportation. In addition to the provision of infrastructure for international transportation, ports have an important role in the transit transportation and logistics as well. In terms of its geo-strategic position, Turkey owns considerable advantages and potentials for the port sector. However, Turkish ports cannot make sufficient use of these advantages as the port sector in Turkey is not well developed enough. From such a perspective, important policies have been established to solve the problems faced at Turkish ports, including solution-focused legislation and strategy application. The purpose of this study is to strategically assess Turkish ports for the last 25 years since 1985 within the scope of loading-unloading development and port planning and investment issues.

Die „Circular Economy“ hat das Zeug für eine andere Systemlogik. Dem ressourcenfressenden Kapitalismus alter Art kann sie durchaus gefährlich werden. Nicht nur der Soziologe Jeremy Rifkin ist da optimistisch. So schaffen Sitting Bull und Grüner Punkt den Umsturz.

Inhalt Vorwort zur Publikation 2018 __________________________________________________ I Der Bau des Gotthardtunnels -viel Geschichte in einer______________________________ I Verknüpfungen und Verflechtungen __________________________________________ II Die Geschichte eines Experiments ___________________________________________ X I Einleitung: Reislaufen nach Göschenen ______________________________________ 1 IX die oft Überlebenserfahrungen waren. 25 Mit Baubeginn zogen Frauen und Männer aus Frankreich und Deutschland, natürlich aus Italien, Österreich, sogar aus Ungarn nach Uri, machten neue Erfahrungen, kehrten zurück in ihre Herkunftsorte, kamen vielleicht später wieder -und so muss man diese Geschichte auch als eine Geschichte von alltagsrelevantem Austausch verstehen, als die Geschichte eines bewegten Hin und Her, das den Bau des Gotthardtunnels ebenso prägte wie dessen Darstellung. Und dann ist es nicht nur die Geschichte von Hiesigen und Fremden, von Handwerkern und Arbeitern, von Ingenieuren und Wirten, es ist auch die Geschichte von Männern und Frauen. In der Geschlechterforschung hat sich die Formulierung etabliert, dass Männlichkeit und Weiblichkeit nicht einfach «sind», sondern dass sie «gemacht» werden. Das bedeutet nicht mehr und nicht weniger, als dass das Umfeld, in dem Menschen leben, die Art und Weise, wie sie sich und andern zu einer bestimmten Zeit und in einem bestimmten gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang Mann-Sein und Frau-Sein bestätigen oder verweigern, ganz grundlegend Einfluss darauf hat, wie Menschen sich benehmen, wie sie sich kleiden und geben, wie sie sprechen und sich bewegen, welche Berufe ihnen zustehen und welche nicht. Wenn jemand diese Grenzen infrage stellt, indem sie oder er diese konstitutiven Normen übertritt, dann kann das existentielle Folgen haben. Die Tunnelbaustelle als sozialer Nicht-Ort im Sinn von Marc Augé war auch ein Bauplatz für Geschlechterrollen. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Junggesellenkultur junger piemontesischer Männer, die sich, schwach kontrolliert, ausserhalb der Herkunftsgemeinschaft aufhielten und im liminalen Raum namens Casinotta 26 ihre Versionen von Männlichkeit erzeugten und unter Beweis stellten, sei es in Schlägereien, Trinkpraktiken, in der Zurschaustellung des eigenen Körpers, oder im Umgang mit Schmerz, Krankheit und Todesangst; in grösserer sexueller Freiheit, in der Vernachlässigung von Haushaltführung. Männlichkeit war auch an den Berg 25 Haumann: Lebenswelten und Geschichte, 2012. 26 Casinotta war der Name für Göschenen auf Italienisch.

Poy 2 y la historia de las ideas, se han producido avances también en la esfera de la historia social, ubicando así al desarrollo del PS en el contexto más amplio de la historia de las y los trabajadores en la Argentina del período. Las vicisitudes de la recepción de las ideas marxistas en el país y la evolución del pensamiento de Juan B. Justo, 2 la vinculación del partido con el movimiento obrero, 3 su desarrollo en distintos puntos del país, 4 las características de su prensa periódica y otros aspectos de su vida cultural, 5 su relación con la Unión Cívica Radical, 6 y el modo de abordar la organización de las mujeres trabajadoras y la lucha por el sufragio femenino, 7 son ejemplos de una lista necesariamente incompleta de los diversos temas que han sido abordados en forma reciente, enriqueciendo nuestro conocimiento sobre el Partido Socialista local.

In this contribution to global mobile lives and scales in global history, Korean cultural studies researcher Jiyoon Kim, University of Tokyo, and German historian Marcia C. Schenck, Princeton University, draw on their respective dissertation research. Experimenting with a conversation
style, we discuss the issue of scale in global history and elaborate on what working with subjects who move transnationally through a Cold-War-influenced world means for our projects on, in Schenck’s case, Angolan and Mozambican labor and education migrants to East Germany in the late 1970s and 1980s. As for Kim, she studies South Korean youth travelers and tour participants who journeyed abroad before and after the full liberalization of overseas travel in 1989. Shedding light on two different sides of the iron curtain, the chronological overlap produced similar insights into the “hot cold war” and the importance of the state in relation to mobility. In explicitly discussing global mobile lives of non-elite actors as a methodological approach to the writing of global history, we engage with issues of scale, units, archives, collaboration and the relationship between history and the present for and in which the historian is writing.

Around the world, historians, journalists and the public interested in the history of communism and the Left have complained about the scarcity of informal or private sources and testimonies about leading groups of the Comintern, the Communist parties and the Soviet leadership. Rightly, it was regretted that only scarcely, information had filtered out of Stalin closest circle, or could not be entrusted to posterity at all. Similarly, the small number of such authentic documents on the leadership of the Comintern in the 1930s and 1940s was emphasized concerning the multiple inflections of international communist policy according to the requirements of foreign policy and Soviet political power in general. The publication of the diary of the Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov, who became "helmsman of the Comintern" under Stalin, and which includes the period between 9 March 1933 and June 1943, marked a major turning point for our knowledge and historiography. Although published some fifteen years ago, the Dimitrov Diary still offers a wealth of knowledge, whose exploitation has only just begun. The following transnational vision tries to resume the history of the Communist International and its relationship with Stalin and the Communist Parties in the light of the new insights provided by the diary. This vision sheds a light on the transnationally entangled process of how anticommunism and nationalism arose from the innermost of the Soviet system itself under the rule of Staline.

Artikel URL: http://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/der-kreative-imperativ-arbeiten-immer-schoener-und-immer-prekaerer/ Der aktuelle Wandel der Arbeit wirft viele Fragen auf. Die Kunstbiennale Manifesta 11, die im Sommer 2016 in Zürich gastiert hat, wollte die Bedingungen, unter denen wir heute arbeiten, künstlerisch-kritisch beleuchten. Paradoxerweise hat sie die Prekarisierung der Arbeit dabei aber eher verstärkt als reflektiert.

Das Gesundheitswesen unterlag in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts weitreichenden Transformationen. Wie sie aus historiografischer Perspektive zu bewerten sind, wurde bisher jedoch erst in Ansätzen diskutiert. Nicht zuletzt mangelt es an Arbeiten, die nicht auf einzelne Themenfelder fokussieren und so die Verschränkungen sowie die Gemeinsamkeiten und Divergenzen von Veränderungen in unterschiedlichen gesundheitspolitischen Feldern aufzeigen. Hier setzt das vorliegende Kapitel an. Mit der Drogen- und der Aidsthematik konzentriert es sich auf zwei zentrale Themen der Gesundheitspolitik im ausgehenden 20. Jahrhundert, deren Geschichten in vielerlei Hinsicht miteinander verbunden waren.

The integration of the countries of eastern and southeastern Europe into global flows of migration has become a major issue not only in migration policy debates , but also in analysing longer term social change in the region. Changes in the magnitudes of migrant remittances can be of crucial social and political importance. In this study, I link a conceptual contribution with a three-step empirical inquiry. First, I conceptualize migrant remittances as a form of external economic dependency. Next, I describe recent changes in the strength of the empirical relationship between migrant remittances as percentages of the GDP and per capita GDP for all societies of the world utilizing data from two online data sets. Employing what Charles Tilly (1984) called " variation-finding comparison, " I examine, next, the – as it turns out, quite sizeable – residual variation in the relative magnitude of remittances that remains after controlling for per capita GDP, and interpret it as a marker for patterns of remittance dependency. Finally, I trace the recent trajectories of the societies that had, until one generation ago, constituted the Soviet " bloc " against the backdrop of the global distribution in remittance dependency. The data have been adopted from two sources: Estimates for migrant remittances as percentages of the GDP of their home country come from the online World Develop

In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, wie Globalisierungsprozesse zum Untergang nationaler Institutionen bei der Auswahl und Entwicklung der Schweizer Wirtschaftselite beigetragen haben. Als Grundlage werden empirische Daten aus zwei aktuellen Forschungsprojekten herangezogen. Die erste Datenbank enthält Profilcharakteristiken der CEOs und Verwaltungsratsvorsitzenden der 110 größten Schweizer Unternehmen über einen Zeitraum von 30 Jahren. Die zweite Datenbank enthält im Jahr 2009 gesammelte Informationen zu den Bildungs-und Karriereprofilen von mehr als 900 Topmanagern, die für über 100 multinationale Unternehmen in vier Ländern (Frankreich, Deutschland, Großbritannien und der Schweiz) gearbeitet haben. Die Analyse der Datenbanken erlaubt es uns, die Globalisierung der Profile und die abnehmende Bedeutung nationaler und traditioneller Elemente zu veranschaulichen und zu beschreiben. Die Schweizer Situation wird in einen größeren Zusammenhang gestellt und mit anderen Ländern insbesondere Frankreich, verglichen.

Die Lohnarbeit, die wir praktizieren und zum Mittelpunkt unseres individuellen und sozialen Lebens machen, wurde mit der Industrialisierung zentral. Heute verdrängen neue Formen des Arbeitens die kollektivvertraglich festgelegte «Normalarbeit». In dem von uns herausgegebenen Buch «Ausser Betrieb. Metamorphosen der Arbeit in der Schweiz» greifen wird diesen Wandel auf und machen ihn sichtbar. In der Einleitung zeichnen wir den Aufstieg, die Stabilisierung und die Erosion der «betriebskapitalistischen» Form der Arbeit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert nach.  Gleichzeitig plädiert das Buch für die «Dezentrierung des Betriebs» als historische Forschungsaufgabe. Die «Provinzialisierung» der betrieblichen Normalarbeit ermöglicht neue Blicke auf die Konflikte um Anerkennung verschiedenster Tätigkeiten als «Arbeit».

Johannes Müske Flexibilisierung als Entgrenzung Technisierungsprozesse und die Veränderung von gewerblicher Arbeit Tauchen heute die Begriffe ‚Entgrenzung' und ‚Arbeit' in den Kultur-und Sozialwissenschaften auf, so oft im Zusammenhang mit Arbeitswelten im Wissenssektor. 1 Ein zentrales Problem der Ethnografie der neuen Arbeitskulturen bilden dabei Umgangspraxen mit den neuen Informations-und Kommunikations-Technologien, wie z. B. die ‚private' und ‚dienstliche' Computernutzung. Auch wenn die Arbeitskulturenforschung (vgl. Götz 1997, 2000; Hirschfelder 2004; Warneken 2001) feststellt, dass das Leitbild der Industriearbeit schon seit einiger Zeit abgelöst wird von dem der Dienstleistungsarbeit (vgl. Schönberger 2007), auch wenn die Arbeiter "unsichtbar" geworden zu sein scheinen (vgl. Beaud/Pialoux 2004: 23 ff.), so gibt es die ‚klassische' Erwerbsarbeit immer noch. 2 Unter klassischer Erwerbsarbeit sollen hier Arbeiterberufe verstanden werden -unabhängig vom Industrie-oder Dienstleistungssektor handelt es sich um fordistische Arbeit, zu denken ist an angelernte (aber auch gelernte) gewerbliche Tätigkeiten mit einem hohen Arbeitsteilungsgrad und mit detaillierten Kontrollmechanismen, wie etwa die Fließarbeit. 3 Auch im vernachlässigten Bereich der gewerblichen Arbeit gibt es Entgrenzungen, die aus einer zuneh-

In his famous dystopia, the Time Machine, famous writer Wells (2003) takes his readers to 802700 year. At that time, there are two different populations. The first of them lives aboveground and enjoys with a very beautiful life, in which there is no possession, trade, gender differences, religion, while the second of them lives underground and produces the wealth of aboveground. However, although the people, who live aboveground, seem very happy in their lives, they afraid of darkness and sleep together all the time. It is because, at nights, other people, who live underground, come and hunt them for eating. According to the writer, class struggles had so deepened that humanity had been divided into two different genres in 802700 year. Moreover, while one of the genres able to have every kind of happiness, the other genre of humanity had deprived of sunlight as well as ability to choose its nourishment. Therefore, they were eating other genre of the population to produce their productive energy (Wells, 2003).

This conceptual article argues that the well-established sociological concept of cosmopolitanism has been inadequately applied to organised labour, and specifically to international activities of trade unions. Taking a Marxian perspective, it sets these subjects side-by-side, considering firstly what the experience of international trade unionism can reveal about cosmopolitanism, and secondly theorising the forms cosmopolitanism may take in international trade union activity. In answer to the first question, it seeks to show how the development of cosmopolitanism assumes radically different forms among union members and managerial elites. In answer to the second question, it typologises international trade unionism using two categories termed ‘managerial’ and ‘mobilising’ internationalisms. These categories have material determinants, and in each the interaction between material interest representation and cosmopolitan normativity assumes different forms.

This paper which has been written for the kick-off conference of our ‘Global Labor History Project of the Shipbuilding Labor’ in Leipzig -hosted institutionally by the International Institute for Social History- aims at a general introduction into the history, dynamics and actors of the shipbuilding sector in Turkey since its beginnings.