Navigating the Bureaucracy of Workplace Rights

Catalog description

This course examines the experiences of workers attempting to navigate the labor standards enforcement bureaucracy. We review theories of legal consciousness and legal mobilization to help explain the conditions under which low-wage workers come forward to demand justice. We walk through claimsmaking in an array of federal and state administrative bureaucracies, including wage and hour, health and safety, and discrimination. We also look at how the immigration enforcement regime impacts workplace protection. We assess how these formal protections are filtered through various institutional gatekeepers and how organizational compliance structures shape worker's ability to make claims on their rights. We consider how intersecting bases of inequality (e.g., gender, race, and national origin) matter, and how lay versus legal conceptions of workplace justice often diverge.