Researching trade union movements through the lens of social movements and shades of activism: fault lines, industrial guerrilla and spontaneous disruption from below

This chapter is about researching at the crossroad of organised labour and social movements. It does so through three shades of activism: alterity, Industrial Guerrilla and spontaneity. The first section focuses on anti-globalisation movements leading to the identification of fault lines in the contest of globalisation. The second examines how workers’ militancy comes to challenge official unions and the prospect of independent workers’ representation in Vietnam. The third is looking at the effervescent yet paradoxical relation between unions and social-movements in the context of social-unionism in France, with a vignette on the emergence of autonomous grass-root based trade unions. The conclusion reflects on the need to accept that social relations and activism can transgress our sociological categorisations. it is less so looking at people through systems and structures, however important they are, than people as structure; that is a methodological posture that accepts that social relations can escape determinism.