Prevailing understandings of labor protest and strikes take as their focus stable democratic settings where autonomous trade union structures are an established component of the organizational resources available to workers. We extend the analysis of labor mobilization to a radically different context: Egypt in the year of the January 25th Revolution, when workers mobilized en masse in the absence of union leadership. For this, we use a catalogue of 4,912 protest events reported in Arabic-language newspapers. Our findings point to the importance of cross-sectoral demonstration effects in contexts of political disorganization—local and national mobilization advancing both labor and nonlabor demands inspired subsequent labor protest. This speaks to the value of understanding labor protest and strikes not as delimited domains of action but as parts of a wider universe of contentious politics. In addition, state-level signals of opportunity and shifts in economic conditions are also found to pattern the incidence of labor mobilization.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
1 June 2018
Research Article|
June 01 2018
OPPORTUNITY WITHOUT ORGANIZATION: LABOR MOBILIZATION IN EGYPT AFTER THE 25TH JANUARY REVOLUTION*
Christopher Barrie;
Please direct correspondence to Christopher Barrie, email: christopher.barrie@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.
Search for other works by this author on:
Mobilization: An International Quarterly (2018) 23 (2): 181–202.
Citation
Christopher Barrie, Neil Ketchley; OPPORTUNITY WITHOUT ORGANIZATION: LABOR MOBILIZATION IN EGYPT AFTER THE 25TH JANUARY REVOLUTION. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 1 June 2018; 23 (2): 181–202. doi: https://doi.org/10.17813/1086-671X-23-2-181
Download citation file:
Sign in
Don't already have an account? Register
Client Account
You could not be signed in. Please check your email address / username and password and try again.
Could not validate captcha. Please try again.
Sign in via your Institution
Sign in via your InstitutionCiting articles via
CULTURAL FORM AND PROTEST: ACT UP NEW YORK’S TACTICS OF IRONY AND CAMP
Terence E. McDonnell, Katherine Everhart
BOOK REVIEWS
Kelsy Kretschmer