Migrant workers face intersecting forms of disempowerment and marginalisation, so – when they actually feel empowered by their collective mobilisations and wins - it is key to understand how they experience such ‘power’. Despite the growing emergence of studies on migrant workers’ collective actions, the extant literature offers limited insight into the diverse, evolving gains and political learning that arise from such workplace victories. Drawing from nearly a decade of ethnographic research with migrant workers mobilising in the Italian logistics sector alongside the grassroots union SICobas, the article examines both standard material gains (such as improved working conditions), migrant-tailored gains and less tangible achievements, including changes in self-representation, and social and political empowerment. By bringing Collins’ (2000) all-encompassing concept of empowerment into the analysis, the article introduces the concept of ‘multi-dimensional empowerment’. The article argues that ‘multi-dimensional empowerment’ is a continuous, layered, evolving process that can increase migrant workers’ political agency within and beyond the workplace.

TYPE OF RESEARCH – empirical

STAGE OF RESEARCH – first draft

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