Globalization from Below: Labor Inequality in the German Shipbuilding Industry, 1960-2000

Abstract

This study examines how globalization affected employment changes in the German shipbuilding industry in the second half of the 20th century. Over four decades, as a response to global competition originally large and labor-intensive shipyards in the northwest of Germany evolved into lean and nimble high-technology companies. Our findings based on 28 oral history interviews with former staff of two leading shipyards show that this large-scale industry transformation is a hitherto hidden history of labor mobility, migration and evolving dimensions of diversity in the workplace. Allowing for a look at globalization from below, the narrations reveal structural and subjective implications on workforce hierarchies and on different workers’ roles and positions. We identify five patterns of social exclusion and inequality between and within groups of workers with and without migrant backgrounds that have not been documented before.