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"In the context of the rising power of capital over labour, research on labour mobilization is important. From the research literature, we know that labour mobilizations might be initiated by trade unions or via workers' self-organization. Yet, we know little about the cultural and social processes through which individual workers come to self-organize in the first place. To address this gap, we present ethnographic research on precarious migrant workers mobilizing with the support of an Italian independent union called SICobas. Our study highlights three processes of self-organizing: formulating shared meanings of discontent, identifying as a group using symbols of inequality and exclusion, and forming communities of struggle. Drawing on Scott's understanding of resistance, we theorize these three processes as ‘informal cultures of resistance'. This concept contributes to emergent research on workers' self-organization, showing the significance of the cultural and social processes that can often underpin formal labour mobilizations."

" This article develops an embedded actor‐centred framework for studying the mobilization and bargaining practices of migrant workers. This framework is applied to examine two instances of labour organizing by low‐paid Latin American workers in London showing how migrant workers can develop innovative collective initiatives located at the junction of class and ethnicity that can be effective and rewarding in material and non‐material terms. In particular, the article shows that while there is a growing interest on the part of established unions to represent migrant workers, their bargaining and mobilization strategies appear inadequate to accommodate the bottom‐up initiatives of such workers who, as a result, have started to articulate them independently. On the basis of the findings obtained, we thus argue in favour of an actor‐centred framework to the study of migration and IR to better identify migrant workers' interests, identities and practices as shaped by complex regulatory and social context. "