This dissertation analyzes transnational labor activism and activist discourses developed in relation to the deadliest garment industrial disaster in the human history - the 2013 collapse of Rana plaza, a factory building housing five garment factories in Savar, Bangladesh. The project takes an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach, involving two-year-long physical and digital ethnographic observation and interviews with Bangladeshi women garment workers, labor rights activists, researchers, and policy makers in Bangladesh and the United States. In this research, I ask what it means for grassroots labor organizers in the Global South, who are often restricted by national borders and neoliberal socio-economic-political forces, to engage in transnational solidarity building. I specifically examine why some grassroots organizing initiatives in the Global South can engage in solidarity building with transnational allies while others do not gain such access. Drawing on the case study of the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh - a transnational govenrance structure that aspired to ensure safety and security for Bangladeshi garment workers after the Rana Plaza collapse, I argue that the post-Rana Plaza transnational collaboration between workers and labor organizers in the Global North and the South reproduces a neoliberal attention economy where gendered and racialized Southern workers receive attention from their Northern allies only if they speak the preferred language, subscribe for a preferred politics, and mobilize donor funds in a preferred way. My ethnographic fieldwork documents how attention from the Northern allies often comes at the cost of losing attention from Southern workers and activists. Therefore, the neoliberal attention economy offers the impossible choice between engaging in transnational collaboration while losing material impact on the ground and focusing on grounded struggles while losing transnational allies.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Women's and Gender Studies
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_8501
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (vii, 225 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Women clothing workers
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Labor unions
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Nafisa Tanjeem
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.