Union by law : Filipino American labor activists, rights radicalism, and racial capitalism /

Political scientists McCann and Lovell (both, Univ. of Washington) explore a century of efforts by Filipino-Americans to secure basic civil rights (to be present, to marry, to own property, to become citizens), and improve conditions in the agricultural and salmon canning industries, while resisting the segregation that kept them in the most dangerous and poorly paid jobs. The introduction explores the Filipino experience of law as an instrument of subjugation, but one with possibilities for collective mobilization to challenge existing power structures. The authors develop this in chapters beginning with resistance to colonialism and concluding with the 1989 Wards Cove decision, in which the US Supreme Court restricted workers' legal options for addressing systemic discrimination. McCann and Lovell explore this history through a theoretical approach focused on the way social actors use law to both enforce and challenge race, class, and gender hierarchies. Filipino activists appealed to democratic norms, advanced creative legal theories, and organized unions and other institutions to support their campaign for a broader emancipatory agenda. Simultaneously a work of labor and immigrant history, and a study of how unequal social power shapes legal possibilities and outcomes, this book would be suitable for libraries supporting relevant graduate programs and those with active outreach to minority readerships. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty. --Jon Bekken, Albright College