Outsourcing and workers’ resistance practices in Venice’s hotel industry: The role of migrants employed by cooperatives

Abstract

Based on qualitative data collected for broader research on the transformation of hotel labour in Venice, Italy, this study explores how workers and unions have experienced outsourcing carried out through cooperatives of convenience (COC). The authors examine the impact of outsourcing on work processes, highlighting its link with growing standardisation and increased managerial control. In contrast to studies that underscore the critical effects of outsourcing on solidarity and the employment system, this article stresses that, even in a sector characterised by union weakness, workers, especially unorganised migrants, develop resistance strategies within the workplace as well as paths of mobilisation.