Transnational Solidarity: Exploring Alternate Global Imaginaries of Work

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lucy Pei can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2026/09/transnational-solidarity-exploring-alternate-global-imaginaries-of-work/. About the post: What is the significance of gig worker activists’ claim on the global scale in relation to reclaiming the futures of work? Following Anna Tsing, I consider scale to be “not just a neutral frame for viewing the world” but instead as something that “must be brought into being: proposed, practiced, and evaded, as well as taken for granted. Scales are claimed and contested in cultural and political projects,” (Tsing, 2005, p. 58). The sample book cover image and slogans are examples of how activists self-consciously claimed the global scale. A gig worker’s complaints can be viewed as a personal-scale problem to be solved by finding a new job or getting reinstated. A union can assert itself as focused on the scale of the factory, the company, the city, or the nation. A social movement can style itself as being local or it can argue that the issues it addresses are global in scale. In addition