Aziz Choudry

Aziz Choudry (1966–2021) was associate professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University and visiting professor at the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, Faculty of Education, University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Learning Activism: The Intellectual Life of Contemporary Social Movements (University of Toronto Press, 2015); coauthor of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009); editor of Activists and the Surveillance State: Learning from Repression (Pluto/Between The Lines, 2019); and coeditor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Organize! Building from the Local for Global Justice (PM Press/Between the Lines, 2012); NGOization: Complicity, Contradictions and Prospects (Zed Books, 2013); Just Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today (Pluto, 2016); Unfree Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (PM Press, 2016); Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements:History’s Schools (Routledge, 2018); and The University and Social Justice: Struggles Across the Globe (Pluto, 2020). Involved in a range of social, political and environmental justice movements and organizations since the 1980s, he served on the board of the Immigrant Workers Centre, Montreal.

Professor Aziz Choudry (23/06/1966 – 26/05/2021)

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from Aziz

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Praise

“The authors of Unfree Labour have done us a great service, reporting and theorizing from the front lines of migrant and immigrant worker organizing in Canada. They’ve produced an internationally important book. The specific stories resonate with a global narrative, in which workers in poorer countries are freed to bring their labour to serve the rich, and are then rendered permanently vulnerable through the collusion of employers, police and government agencies. This bitter liberty is, however, being fought: look for inspiration in the reflections by organizers on resisting racialized capitalism, and the victories they’ve achieved, far from the media’s gaze, in fields, factories, fast-food and homes.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing and Stuffed and Starved

“Analyzing the contemporary production of ‘unfree’ labour in Canada’s immigration and neoliberal economic policies, this book makes an excellent contribution to the fields of labour and migration studies. Grounded in the struggles of migrant workers against racialized bondage, the studies presented by Choudry and Smith draw much needed attention to one of the most important movements of our times. A must read for all concerned with labour rights and economic justice in an increasingly polarized world.”
—Sunera Thobani, author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada

“Choudry and Smith have put together an impressive collection of authors who reveal the ugly truth about Canadian so-called values: that Canada is a willing participant and leader in the exploitation, racialization and commodification of human labour on stolen land. They reveal much about a human dignity that shines a light on the Canadian hubris and myth of being a champion of ‘human rights’ as families and people are torn asunder in the name of profit and privilege.”
—David Bleakney, second national vice-president, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

“Unfree Labour systematically shows how rapacious capitalists and the state thrive and secure profits through the systematic subordination of women, nonwhite, and migrant labourers. The chapters document that exploitation, so reminiscent of feudalism and early capitalism are ever-present in our modern capitalist system in the West. The chapters in this book provide chilling accounts of the constrained lives of domestics, agricultural labourers, and the growth of temporary foreign workers, so dependent on removing and denying rights that were achieved over the past two centuries. Choudry and Smith have assembled a comprehensive and outstanding book that is essential for all scholars of the labour movement.”
—Immanuel Ness, editor of New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class Struggle Unionism

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Praise

“This superb collection needs to find its way into the hands of every activist and organizer for social justice. In a series of dazzling essays, an amazing group of radical organizers reflect on what it means to build movements in which people extend control over their lives. These analyses are jam-packed with insights about antiracist, anticolonial, working-class, and anticapitalist organizing. Perhaps most crucially, the authors lay down a key challenge for all activists for social justice: to take seriously the need to build mass movements for social change. Don’t just read this exceptionally timely and important work—use it too.”
—David McNally, author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance

“To understand the world, you have to try to change it. That’s what the authors of this fine set of essays and meditations have taken to heart. The result? Some of the best insights on power, organizing, and revolution to be found.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Organize!- A Foreword Review
• Organize! A Review
• Avec Nous, Dans la Rue: Pedagogy of Mobilization, University of the Streets
• Organize!: Building from the Local for Global Justice in the Globe & Mail
• Unfree Labour?: A Review in Rank and File
• The Struggle of organising Migrant Workers
• Unfree Labour?: Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada: A Review
• Unfree Labour? in Adult Education Quarterly

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Interviews

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Mentions

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Blog

• Activists, State Surveillance, and Political Policing
• The Perils of “Dropping Knowledge”: Dr. Aziz Choudry Interviewed by Erika Massoud