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The world seen from a taxi: Students-migrants-workers in the global multiplication of labour

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Abstract

In April 2008, after the stabbing of one of their fellow workers, taxi drivers in the Australian city of Melbourne, many of them from India, blockaded the city. They chanted, removed their shirts, refused the ministrations of police and government, and through their actions forced an acceptance of their demands. The article takes this event as a point of departure to analyse new forms of political practice, experience and subjectivity that emerge in a world where international borders are no longer the only or necessarily the most relevant barriers for dividing or restricting the mobility of labour. Of particular interest is the fact that most of the drivers who participated in the strike are also international students. At stake is the emergence of a new kind of labour politics whose organisational forms are at once more flexible and more unstable than those of the trade union movement.

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Acknowledgements

Crucial in the preparation of this paper has been research and editing assistance from Anja Kanngieser as well as personal exchanges with Liz Thompson, a former Student Rights Officer at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Student Union, who has worked closely with student taxi drivers. I also acknowledge the two anonymous referees, and posts/discussion on the following blogs: archive: s0metim3s (http://archive.blogsome.com) and GlobalHigherEd (http://globalhighered.wordpress.com).

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Correspondence to Brett Neilson.

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Neilson, B. The world seen from a taxi: Students-migrants-workers in the global multiplication of labour. Subjectivity 29, 425–444 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.23

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