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Transnational Activist Networks And The Emergence Of Labor Internationalism In The Nafta Countries, Joel Stillerman

Peer Reviewed Articles

Recent accounts of transnational activism have examined a variety of social movement organizations (SMOs) but have paid little attention to labor transnationalism. This article utilizes and adapts this new transnational social movements scholarship to understand contemporary labor activism in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries. Exploring the preexisting networks and intramovement cleavages that helped spawn labor opposition to NAFTA, it focuses on labor activists' complaints under the treaty's labor side accord. I explore how rising political opportunities associated with the treaty and its new institutions created new political arenas, targets for activists, and incentives for cross-border collaboration. The …