This contribution discusses trajectories of labour power in the making. Taking a practice theory perspective on power, and focusing on the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, the author asks how Bangladeshi trade unions are attempting to use changes in the industrial landscape after the factory collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 to constitute different power sources. The article challenges assumptions in power resource theories that associational, institutional and social-cultural power are pre-existing factors, arguing that trade unions have to co-construct and enact those power sources in order for them to become meaningful. The article contributes to the debate on Networks of Labour Activism (NOLA) by showing that networked interactions with global unions and other labour support organizations help to construct power in an incremental way through information sharing, claim reframing, increasing social recognition, and the construction of a 'shadow of protection' for trade unions. But it also points out new limitations resulting from managerial and political resistance, which aims to contain and reverse the growing power of labour. The Bangladesh Accord is a double-edged sword: on the one hand it provides unions with new opportunities for developing strategic capabilities, while on the other hand it is used by powerful domestic actors to discredit trade unions and mobilize workers against the constraints of the Accord.

As an Introduction to the Debate section that follows, this article develops the concept of ‘Networks of Labour Activism’ (NOLA) as a distinct, and important, aspect of cross‐border, cross‐organizational mobilization of workers, trade unions and other organizations and groups. NOLAs are seen as different from traditional labour activist networks in that they are neither solely connected to the position of labour in production processes, nor wholly reliant on the soft and discursive power of advocacy coalitions. The authors understand NOLAs to be characterized by the interaction of different types of labour rights, social movement and community organizations, joining forces in complex forms of strategizing vis‐à‐vis multiple targets. Thus, cross‐boundary strategizing (across organizational and geographical divides) is seen as a basic characteristic of NOLAs. The authors argue that NOLAs continue to be deeply embedded in political‐economic contexts of the state and global value chains, and alliance formation reflects the peculiar vulnerabilities and constraints resulting from this embeddedness. This Introduction draws on multiple studies of NOLAs from around the world, but its main focus is on some of those Asian countries which are at the centre of global supply chain capitalism and labour exploitation, and which have become the laboratory for new forms of networked worker agency and activism.

This book explores rising labor unrest in China as it integrates into the global political economy. The book highlights the tensions present between China’s efforts to internationalize and accept claims to respect freedom of association rights, and its continuing insistence on a restrictive, and often punitive, approach to worker organizations. The author examines how the global labor movement can support the improvement of working conditions in Chinese factories. The book presents a novel multi-level approach capturing how trade unions and labor rights NGOs have mobilized along different pathways while attempting to influence labor standards in Chinese supply chains since 1989: within the ILO, within the European Union, leveraging global brands or directly supporting domestic labor rights NGOs. Based on extensive fieldwork in Europe, the US and China, the book shows that activists, by operating at multiple scales, were on some occasions able to support improvements over time. It also indicates how a politically and economically strong state such as China can affect transnational labor activism, by directly and indirectly undermining the opportunities that organized civil societies have to participate in the evolving global labor governance architecture.1 Introduction: Multilevel Labor Activism, Transnational Institutions, and China 2 Defining the Shadow of the Dragon: China’s Internal and External Strength 3 Transnational Activism within the International-Organizational Pathway. The Case of the ILO 4 The Bilateral Pathway: The European Union and China 5 The Market Pathway 6 The Civil Society Pathway 7 Conclusion: Labor Transnationalism in Global Capitalism and Plural Institutional Settings Appendix Inde

Public policies implemented to flatten the curve of COVID-19 infections created unprecedented challenges for social movements. Most striking was the de facto temporary suspension of the right to assembly. Using the case of pro-migrant mobilizations in Germany as an example, we analyse how social movements are affected by and respond to this exceptional context. Instead of a breakdown, we find evidence for a proliferation of mobilization. This is surprising since COVID-19 related restraints were particularly accentuated for pro-migrant mobilizations. We argue that this puzzle can be explained by looking at the particular framing strategies and the hybrid online and offline protest practices used by activists. Integrating empirical insights of social movements in times of crisis, theoretical approaches to boundary spanning, intersectional frame bridging, and hybrid combinations of online and offline protest, our article provides an analysis of pro-migrant mobilizations in times of pandemic. It also sketches-out avenues for future research on plural alliance formation in diverse societies.

While there are heated debates about how digitalization affects production, management and consumption in the context of global value chains, less attention is paid to how workers use digital technologies to organize and formulate demands and hence exercise power. This paper explores how workers in supplier factories in global value chains use different digital tools to exercise and enhance their power resources to improve working conditions. Combining the global value chain framework and concepts from labour sociology on worker power, the paper uses examples from the garment industry in Honduras and the footwear industry in China to show how workers used old and new digital tools to create and enhance associational and networked powers. Digital tools were used by workers and their allies in the global value chain to lower costs of communication, increase information exchange and participate in transnational campaigns during labour struggles vis-à-vis firms and governments in structurally and politically repressive environments. The paper contributes to our understanding of how workers use of digital technologies to exercise and combine different resources of power in online and offline actions in global value chains, as well as how they are confronted by new dimensions of constrains which include digital surveillance and control by the state.