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Immanuel Ness
Economist Author Researcher
Examining political economy, development, sustainability and global transformation through research, writing and public engagement.
About Immanuel Ness
Immanuel Ness is a political scientist, labor scholar, and socialist writer whose work focuses on international political economy, labor movements, migration, imperialism, and the dynamics of global capitalism. His research examines class struggle, workers’ organizations, labor migration, and the political economy of development, with particular attention to the Global South and emerging forms of worker resistance in the contemporary world economy.
He has written extensively on labor unrest, socialism, anti-imperialism, global production systems, and the changing nature of work under capitalism. His scholarship also explores issues of democracy, social movements, trade unions, and revolutionary politics from a historical and comparative perspective.
Blog & Articles
News
U.S. Imperialists Weaponize COVID-19 Propaganda Against China
As the United States seeks to deflect its culpability, complicity and responsibility in developing t...
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International labour migration and decent work
From the 1980s to the present, international labour migration has steadily expanded as demand for wo...
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Theory
Western Marxism, Anti-Communism and Imperialism
This article was originally published in International Critical Thought journal, and you can access...
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The chimera of new forms of worker organisation: why trade unions matter in rebuilding national and global labour movements
The decline in union representation is occurring globally even as the working class has been growing...
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Theory
Immanuel Ness and Migration as Economic Imperialism: How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries
Immanuel Ness brought us new research on migration and what it means for global capitalism...
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Analysis
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism: Interview with Immanuel Ness
The past couple of decades, especially the period after the last structural crisis broke o...
Read More"In these depressing times, when the neoliberal consensus has acquired an aura of inevitability akin to the Laws of Physics, it is a breath of fresh air to read serious scholarship that challenges this consensus."
- Norman Finkelstein -FAQs
What People Say
Reviews and feedback from readers, researchers and collaborators.
In these depressing times, when the neoliberal consensus has acquired an aura of inevitability akin to the Laws of Physics, it is a breath of fresh air to read serious scholarship that challenges this consensus.
Norman Finkelstein
A rich combination of theoretical insights and valuable case-studies from the Global South - a much-needed reminder that the agenda of social transformation requires a strong and sustained political intervention to turn protests into a powerful movement
Prabhat Patnaik
Whether named colonialism, neocolonialism or globalization, imperialism still organizes much of the world economy. This book systematically locates labour migration within the capitalist imperialism that overdetermined it... thereby adding an overdue critical perspective to the study of labour migration.
Richard D. Wolff
This meaningful intervention in debates about labour migration will be of great interest and will be read widely.
Cecilia Menjívar
The rising anti-imperialist struggles in both the underdeveloped and developed countries are signalling the resurgence of the world proletarian-socialist revolution. Immanuel Ness makes a just call for forging a global workers' movement by reinvigorating and further developing the trade union movement, the workers' parties and political movements to fight for the rights and interests of the working class and the rest of the suffering people
Jose Maria Sison
Excellent, sophisticated, highly readable, and tightly organized. […] Ness has provided us with an outstanding and ground-breaking text that deserves a wide readership. Considering the issue’s political implications, I hope that both scholars and lay readers will take advantage of this important book. If they do, they will be richly rewarded.
Victor Devinatz
In this well researched and informative book, Ness digs into multiple facets of the global economy of migration. […] The essential role of migrant labor in global capitalism tends to be underappreciated, and Ness performs a valuable service in exposing the widespread and destabilizing dynamics of that process.
Gregory Elich
Migration as Economic Imperialism makes a compelling case for the deep-seated problems associated with seeing migration as a tool of emancipation for poor countries. It also provides valuable food for thought regarding what needs to happen to redress global inequality as it relates to the movement of workers across national borders.