Chokepoints Amidst the Trade War: Immigrant Worker Power in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands

Abstract This article asks what the opportunities for and constraints on labor organizing in San Diego’s logistics sector are. Using Amazon warehouse workers and XPO Logistics truck drivers as illustrative examples the paper uses the power resources approach to assess the associational, institutional, societal, structural, and disruptive power workers have at their disposal in the region’s logistics sector. Drawn from a broader project on the San Diego–Tijuana region’s logistics sector that uses 2 years of fieldwork, 25 semi-structured interviews, oral history accounts, quantitative data, and primary document analysis it is argued that while structural power is high due to occupying an important position along the supply chain amidst the ongoing global trade war, associational power and institutional power are low due to the precarious citizenship status of many workers in the region and the independent contractor status of truckers. However, there are some exceptions associated with lower rates of turnover due to the transnational nature of work and social reproduction as well as the accompanying social ties. Furthermore, it is argued that building societal power with immigrant rights and legal aid organizations is important to building the disruptive capacity of workers.