Labour, democracy and the post-colonial state: Spaces of union organising and the ‘duppy state'

Gowland, B., Featherstone, D. and Karaliotas, L. (2024) Labour, democracy and the post-colonial state: Spaces of union organising and the ‘duppy state'. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 114(1), pp. 21-38. (doi: 10.1080/24694452.2023.2240875)

Abstract

This article examines the democratic political praxes and contestations developed by trade unions in relations with the postcolonial state in both the Global North and South. Our work is informed by the scholarship of Richard Iton on the postcolonial duppy state and notions of the colonial past haunting the postcolonial present through the rearticulation of racialized, imperial labor regimes and relations in a postcolonial context. We engage with Trinidad’s Oilfields Workers Trade Union and the British National Union of Seamen to explore how this “haunting” was both contested and modulated by the labor activism of unions in both the former colony and metropole during the period of mid-twentieth-century decolonization. Empirically, we show how unionized workers sought to expand and entrench democratic cultures in opposition to the continued racialization of labor and the uneven power relations existent between labor, the state, and capital. This article responds to recent calls in labor geography to broaden the sites and subjects of study beyond workers in the Global North and introduces a study of the postcolonial state to claims to democratic politics in labor–state relations.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: Thanks are due to the Leverhulme Trust for Award No. RPG-2021-093, which funded the research project “Trade Unions and Spaces of Democratisation in Britain, the Caribbean andGreece” from which this article draws.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Karaliotas, Dr Lazaros and Featherstone, Professor David
• Authors: Gowland, B., Featherstone, D., and Karaliotas, L.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Journal Name: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 2469-4452
• ISSN (Online): 2469-4460
• Published Online: 08 September 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)
• First Published: First published in Annals of the American Association of Geographers 114(1):21-38
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons licence

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
311986		Trade Unions and Spaces of Democratizaton in Britain, the Caribbean and Greece	David Featherstone	Leverhulme Trust (LEVERHUL)	RPG-2021-093	GES - Geography