Entangled inequalities, divergent struggles: migration and the Argentine textile industry

Despite the economic recovery that followed the 2001-2002 crisis in Argentina, sectors that rely on a significant migrant worker presence, such as textiles, have maintained and consolidated previously-existing forms of exploitation and discrimination. In this context, trade unions and other civil society actors are fighting against the inequalities that affect Bolivian migrant workers in the textile industry in Buenos Aires and La Plata. This article seeks to understand some of the limitations of that struggle. Such limitations relate to the difficulty of acting on entangled inequalities, and respond to the seemingly irreconcilable forms of association in terms of class, nationality or ethnicity of these organisations, which generate divergent characterisations of the inequalities and of the actors involved. 

Key words: labour migration, civil society organisations, trade unions, inequalities, Buenos Aires, La Plata

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