Michelle Chen

The United States isn't unique when it comes to political and social crises related to immigration. Migrants in other parts of the world face similar, sometimes much harsher struggles. Even those who are "legal" are often extremely vulnerable to economic exploitation, racial discrimination, and physical and sexual abuse. Abuse...

Women have been under economic assault in Washington for months. Deficit hawks have taken aim at social programs and civil rights protections that help keep women safe, healthy and able to participate in work and community life. To some lawmakers, none of that is more important than "saving" taxpayer dollars...

Cross-posted from In These Times

In the Kingdom of Jordan, conflict erupted in the Palestinian refugee community, but it wasn't the kind of unrest you might expect in a society of survivors of war. The protesters were employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian...

For a moment in Washington, it seemed like the White House was finally getting serious about reforming the agricultural labor system, with a common sense rule about preventing harm to child workers. But under pressure from the agribusiness lobby, the administration appears to have retreated from an initiative to tighten...

The impact of the Los Angeles riots still resonates 20 years on. Here's an audio take on the experience of the chaos -- all the pain, the fear, the search for healing amid relentless destruction, and the hope for redemption rising from the ashes. The community has changed...

As the media swarmed over the scandal surrounding the Secret Service's alleged carousing with prostitutes in Colombia, another questionable financial transaction slipped quietly through the backdoor of hemispheric diplomacy.

While officials convened at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena earlier this month, the White House put the...

Apple presides over a global technology empire, but the economic landscapes it shapes around the world are strangely uneven. With its hundreds of thousands of employees worldwide, Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn works very differently in two hemispheres of the Global South.

The think tank Economic Policy Institute recently

It's almost poetic that this year's Equal Pay Day -- the one day of the year when Americans are supposed to reflect on the value (and undervaluing) of women's work --coincided with the media firestorm surrounding the American stay-at-home-mom. The "controversy" over Ann Romney's decision to stay...

For many American cities, the budget process is basically fiscal hell, and the politics of plugging potholes and funding schools akin to legislative purgatory. But a tiny miracle just arrived in New York City. Communities are experimenting with Participatory Budgeting, a system for giving local people a say in planning...

The universe of the Web-based marketplace allows you to sell just about anything online today -- so why not your labor? The "help wanted" page has now upgraded itself for an Information Age economic crisis, with a new crop of services that link odd jobs to people looking to make...

Buried in Indonesia's rich soil is a minefield of brutality, literally. Last year, the Grasberg mine of the Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold, one of the largest such operations in the world, shut down after thousands of workers launched a strike to demand higher wages. Work recently resumed, but the...

"[When I was 12] they gave me my first knife. Week after week I was cutting myself. Every week I had a new scar. My hands have a lot of stories."

-- 17-year-old boy who started working at age 11 in Michigan (Human Rights Watch)

America's farm workers...

Somewhere in your community today, an elder person is wondering when she'll be able to take her medicine today, or have a chance to see the sun. And her mind will be put at ease once her aide arrives to help her get dressed, eat breakfast or take a walk...

Apple's brand glared in the media spotlight this past week, after the public learned that performance artist Mike Daisey's theatrical rendering of the struggles of Apple factory workers contained false claims -- painfully exposed on an episode of the radio program This American Life. But if one fundamental...

The world's greatest games are about to begin in London. But outside the sporting spectacle this summer, few will notice where the real cheating is going on: in Asian factories that churn out plush mascots and other Olympiad gear, corporations have freely exploited lax labor regulations. As the Olympics approach,...

One official measure of poverty around the world is surviving on $2 per day or less. It's a condition many Americans could barely imagine living in. And yet the official data suggests that while politicians insist the U.S. is insulated from such deprivation, a large share of the country is...

For years, they wondered why they kept getting turned down for jobs, even when they seemed well qualified. The workers might have all just chalked it up to bad luck if they hadn't eventually discovered they were at the center of an extraordinary conspiracy.

An investigation by the UK government's...

India’s economic ascent seems like it should be the envy of the world’s richest nations; with rocketing growth rates and gargantuan consumer and labor markets, India's destiny as Asia's next superstar looks beyond a doubt. Except Indian workers just gave the boosters of global capitalism a few million second...

To commemorate the first anniversary of the overthrow of the dictatorship, activists in Egypt called for a general strike earlier this month. But compared to the massive uprising of 2011, the response on the ground was muted. The military regime that has succeeded Hosni Mubarak was...