Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States

Jennifer Jihye Chun's rigorous methodology incorporates a masterful blend of comparative historical and ethnographic approaches and her writing is lucid and fine-grained. This book reveals eye-opening connections and parallels between the South Korean and U.S. labor movements' responses to the erosion of workers' rights in the face of neoliberal globalization policies. It is a must-read for scholars of labor and labor movements, as well as an engaging text that will provoke students to think about how ideas of justice and morality are forged through protest, state policies, and public sentiments. -Contemporary Sociology

Organizing at the Margins successfully points to the importance of extralegal tactics used in campaigns seeking to redefine the working conditions of low-wage contract and subcontracted employees who lack the legal protections afforded to regularly employed workers. This well-organized book lays the theoretical and methodological groundwork for further cross-national analyses of campaigns that use symbolic leverage in support of the struggles of marginalized workers. -American Journal of Sociology

Jennifer Jihye Chun's comparison of two seemingly very different labor movements-the militant Korean movement on the one hand and the bureaucratic U.S. movement on the other-reveals striking similarities in their leverage of power for the powerless. In Organizing at the Margins, Chun skillfully examines how and under what conditions marginalized workers successfully challenge their employment status. -Industrial and Labor Relations Review

This book comprises a fascinating comparison of the seemingly incomparable-namely, labor movement strategies to organize marginalized service sector workers in the United States and South Korea. Chun draws on Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of classification struggle and symbolic power to provide a substantial theoretical understanding of new forms of struggle in a way that I have not seen done elsewhere; in doing this she demonstrates the value of bringing new theoretical perspectives to bear on labor studies, a field sorely in need of this. -Global Labour Journal

Organizing at the Margins brings critical awareness and insight to the plight and political struggles of the women and men who live and work under conditions of economic precarity and social anonymity at the margins of contemporary labor markets in the United States and South Korea. -Journal of Asian Studies

In an excellent work, Jennifer Jihye Chun compares concrete cases of labour organization by marginalized workers in these two different countries and situates them within the context of broader shifts in power between labour, capital and the state. -Pacific Affairs

Organizing at the Margins is an excellent contribution to our understanding of global labor movements. Jennifer Jihye Chun combines careful ethnographic case studies of recent union campaigns among low-wage service workers in the United States and South Korea with nuanced theoretical discussion to develop a provocative and highly original perspective on labor organizing in the neoliberal era. -Ruth Milkman, author of L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement and coeditor of Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy

In this age of neoliberal capitalism, the rise of labor activism among the most vulnerable workers in the service sector is a very interesting phenomenon. The United States and South Korea may appear to be an unlikely pair for a comparative analysis of how labor activists effect change, but Organizing at the Margins demonstrates how their respective tactics converge. In both countries, some of the weakest and most marginalized members of the labor force have been successful in organizing unions and obtaining just treatment from their employers and the state. -Hagen Koo, University of Hawai'i, Manoa, author of Korean Workers