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  • LAWCHA and the Future of Global Labor History
  • Shelton Stromquist and Priyanka Srivastava, Cochairs, LAWCHA Global Affairs Committee

Like other national labor history associations, the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) has experienced the shifting tides of globalization in labor history, both intellectually and organizationally. Many of us try to situate our scholarship in a transnational and comparative context in ways that highlight the forces of global capitalism, the transnational migration of workers over centuries, the historical patterns of international labor organization and solidarity, and the responses of workers to the restructuring of a global economy under neoliberal regimes. The invigorating effects on our field have been notable as historians and scholars in a range of disciplines have created common ground for collaborative investigations, organized conferences, published collections of essays or documentary sources, and realigned journals to reflect these transnational shifts.

It must be pointed out that transnational investigations and international collaborations are not new in the field of labor history or in labor activism and organization. However, we are without question in a new era, because these developments are now quickened by enhanced social media communication capacities and the wider exchange of information and ideas. At the same time, global crises facing working people spawned by new forms of labor exploitation, precariousness of work, attacks on the right to unionize, climate change, right-wing repression, and increasing levels of mass migration have motivated academics and activists to adopt new approaches to studying and organizing workers.

LAWCHA has come to embody some of these developments. From its earliest days, our journal, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, has provided a vehicle for transnational studies in the Americas and, in recent years, has cast a wider global net. We have seen international participation in LAWCHA annual conferences grow from 2013 in New York through 2017 in Seattle and 2019 in Durham, North Carolina, along with rising numbers of conference panels and plenaries devoted to comparative and transnational history and contemporary international labor activism. LAWCHA collaborated with the Australian Association for the Study of Labour [End Page 7] History to mount an international conference in Sydney in 2015 on comparative US and Australian labor history, the fruits of which were subsequently published in 2018 in a volume of essays titled Frontiers of Labor: Comparative Histories of the United States and Australia. LAWCHA's website continues to highlight the ongoing work of other labor history organizations internationally and news of labor struggles around the world.

LAWCHA's Global Affairs Committee, established in 2013, has reorganized in the past year, added new members, and defined an ambitious agenda for the coming year. We plan to enhance the visibility of global labor history and activism on the committee page of LAWCHA's website (www.lawcha.org/committee-portal/global-affairs-committee/); we have thrown support to two international conferences—one commemorating the International Labour Organization's anniversary and another on global labor migration; committee members are committed to contributing short articles, reviews, and opinion pieces to LAWCHA's Labor Online; and we have conducted a wide-ranging survey of LAWCHA members that points to important avenues for future work in the field.

The global affairs survey yielded interesting and provocative results. About one-fourth of LAWCHA members (110) responded to the survey. Over 40 percent of the respondents had belonged to LAWCHA for fewer than five years, suggesting a younger cohort of members. A substantial majority indicated interests in research, teaching, and labor activism with a transnational focus and geographical interests literally spanning the globe. While most had not regularly visited the LAWCHA Global Affairs Committee web page, strong majorities indicated interest in seeing reports on recent transnational scholarship and labor activism. They also faithfully read Labor Online. Many agreed to get more involved by attending international conferences and workshops and contributing short reports and essays on international themes. Most tellingly, the survey respondents offered wide-ranging suggestions for future focus and organization, from actively building transnational connections and collaborations between scholars and activists, especially those in Latin America, to creating more inclusive panels at the annual meetings, making greater use of social media tools like Facebook and Instagram to strengthen international ties...

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