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Setting the Stage for Cross-Border Solidarity

Movement Spillover and Early Mobilization in the Nicaragua Labor Rights Campaign

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, dale.wimberley{at}vt.edu

From 1996 to 2001, a network of U.S. organizations and activists intensively pressed corporations and government agencies to stop thwarting workers’ efforts to unionize Nicaragua’s assembly-for-export garment factories. Preexisting transnational mobilization— goal-seeking remnants of the 1980s U.S. Central America peace movement, networked with elements of Nicaragua’s Sandinista movement—propelled this cross-border campaign into existence. Some campaign organizations had U.S. union ties, but others, including some of the most pivotal organizations, did not; this and other forms of diversity strengthened the campaign by facilitating an effective interorganizational division of labor. The campaign adopted strategies that took into account its power relations with opponents and the other opportunity structures it was dealt, and it developed effective frames to recruit old and new activists to carry out this new mission.

Key Words: cross-border labor solidarity • Nicaraguan labor unions • movement spillover • garment industry • transnational social movements

This version was published on September 1, 2009

Labor Studies Journal, Vol. 34, No. 3, 318-338 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0160449X08318510


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