Starting in the early 1900s, many thousands of native Filipinos were conscripted as laborers in American West Coast agricultural fields and Alaska salmon canneries. There, they found themselves confined to exploitative low-wage jobs in racially segregated workplaces as well as subjected to vigilante violence and other forms of ethnic persecution. In time, though, Filipino workers formed political organizations and affiliated with labor unions to represent their interests and to advance their struggles for class, race, and gender-based social justice.
Union by Law analyzes the broader social and legal history of Filipino American workers' rights-based struggles, culminating in the devastating landmark Supreme Court ruling, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989). Organized chronologically, the book begins with the US invasion of the Philippines and the imposition of colonial rule at the dawn of the twentieth century. The narrative then follows the migration of Filipino workers to the United States, where they mobilized for many decades within and against the injustices of American racial capitalist empire that the Wards Cove majority willfully ignored in rejecting their longstanding claims. This racial innocence in turn rationalized judicial reconstruction of official civil rights law in ways that significantly increased the obstacles for all workers seeking remedies for institutionalized racism and sexism. A reclamation of a long legacy of racial capitalist domination over Filipinos and other low-wage or unpaid migrant workers, Union by Law also tells a story of noble aspirational struggles for human rights over several generations and of the many ways that law was mobilized both to enforce and to challenge race, class, and gender hierarchy at work.
Starting in the early 1900s, many thousands of native Filipinos were conscripted as laborers in American West Coast agricultural fields and Alaska salmon canneries. There, they found themselves confined to exploitative low-wage jobs in racially segregated workplaces as well as subjected to vigilante violence and other forms of ethnic persecution. In time, though, Filipino workers formed political organizations and affiliated with labor unions to represent their interests and to advance their struggles for class, race, and gender-based social justice.
Union by Law analyzes the broader social and legal history of Filipino American workers' rights-based struggles, culminating in the devastating landmark Supreme Court ruling, Wards Cove Packing Co. v. Atonio (1989). Organized chronologically, the book begins with the US invasion of the Philippines and the imposition of colonial rule at the dawn of the twentieth century. The narrative then follows the migration of Filipino workers to the United States, where they mobilized for many decades within and against the injustices of American racial capitalist empire that the Wards Cove majority willfully ignored in rejecting their longstanding claims. This racial innocence in turn rationalized judicial reconstruction of official civil rights law in ways that significantly increased the obstacles for all workers seeking remedies for institutionalized racism and sexism. A reclamation of a long legacy of racial capitalist domination over Filipinos and other low-wage or unpaid migrant workers, Union by Law also tells a story of noble aspirational struggles for human rights over several generations and of the many ways that law was mobilized both to enforce and to challenge race, class, and gender hierarchy at work.
Michael W. McCann is the Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of eight books, including, most recently, Injury and Injustice. George I. Lovell is professor and chair in the Department of Political Science, the Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies, and adjunct professor in Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington. He is the author of Legislative Deferrals and This Is Not Civil Rights, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press.
"Union by Law is a pioneering subaltern history of immigrant
workers and their relationship to law and legal institutions in the
20th century. The book should fundamentally reshape how we do
research on legal mobilization and social movements. Rather than
analyzing discrete, bounded episodes of law and organizing, this
pioneering study examines resistance across time and space in order
to capture questions of differential power, to understand the
development of nomoi and narratives, and to see clearly the
long-term dynamics of racial hierarchy and global empire. Though
unique in its narrative, lens, and methodology, the book confirms
much of what sociolegal scholars like Stuart Scheingold and Michael
McCann himself have long argued: law is variegated both for and
against social justice; official law is repressive in most moments
but can signal possibility in others."-- "The Law & Society
Review"
Can anti-discrimination litigation be a tool for social change? For
many years, a contingent on the academic left contended that the
answer is no . . . . A remarkable new book by Michael McCann and
George Lovell offers a different view . . . . That is what makes
Union by Law such a timely book. McCann and Lovell fully appreciate
the limits of legal rights, and of anti-discrimination law in
particular . . . . Yet the authors are not prepared to give up on
legal rights mobilization. In their view, "law still provides one
of the most important institutionalized sites . . . for subaltern
group resistance to . . . hegemonic policies, practices, and
relationships in both state and society." They note that "legions
of leftist activists in and beyond the United States have embraced
the liberal principle of egalitarian citizenship to challenge the
proprietarian, profit-based principles of capitalism." Legal
contests, they conclude, "often generate 'forums of protest' that
can keep alive alternative ideas and ideals, inspire and hotwire
mobilization for new forms of advocacy, keep pressure on dominant
groups to reassess their interests in conceding changes that
benefit marginalized people, and thus sometimes alter at least
slightly the balance of power among social groups." That may not be
much, but it is something to celebrate in the ongoing battle for
social change . . . . Rather than simply writing off
antidiscrimination law as inherently neoliberal, we should
recognize the important though limited role it can play as one of
many tools to achieve more radical ends.
-- "Dissent"
"Union by Law is a tour de force, a product of an immense amount of
research and knowledge. It carefully and artfully follows the
political and legal experience of Filipino Americans from initial
US Colonization to union mobilization to Cold War-era violent
struggle to the Wards Cove decision at the end of the 1980s.
Throughout an illuminating and beautifully written historical
narrative, the authors carefully delineate the ways in which law
enveloped the lives of these immigrant laborers, both in confining
and offering certain momentary opportunities. It is another
terrific addition to the canon of these two leading scholars of the
field."--Paul Frymer, Princeton University
"Union by Law offers a magisterial and inspiring history of
inter-generational and transnational struggle by Filipino migrants
conscripted to work in the Alaska salmon canning industry. With
rigor and care, the book examines the brutality of racial
subordination, its iron-clad linkage with worker exploitation, and
the extent both rely on legalized forms of oppression. But from the
margins, workers find the courage to reclaim power and rewrite the
legal meaning of discrimination in a system of racial capitalism.
That the system ultimately stymies the workers' boldest claims only
underscores the necessity of their struggle. In this sense, it is a
history that speaks with particular force to our current
times."--Scott Cummings, UCLA School of Law
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