‘Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!’ Global capital and immigrant rights

Abstract

The recent mass demonstrations by millions of Latino immigrant workers in the US, against planned legislation that could lead to the criminalisation and deportation of, literally, millions of workers shook the Bush administration and took commentators by surprise. The upsurge has been dubbed the new civil rights movement. It marks a new stage in globalisation and the phenomenon of mass, trans-national migration that such globalisation has engendered. Unprecedented in size and scope, the movement challenges the structural changes bound up with capitalist globalisation and points to the necessity of transnational popular and democratic struggles against it.