This chapter concentrates on the labor force of an industrial sector-footwear-which is characterized by the fragmentation of production and the weak effectivity of labor rights. The analysis examines the existence of two processes of articulation which the dominant model of regulation has been focusing on, seeking to identify their respective potentialities for emancipatory action within the current framework of globalization. The interpretation of these processes is based on the experiences and modalities of action coming out of the sector's union.

The first process concerns the articulation between industry and community. The author seeks, on the one hand, to show in what circumstances the industrial logic established itself and shaped community dynamics in the region, and on the other hand to identify experiences and modalities of grassroots intervention coordinated by the union structure. It is exactly in this kind of experience that we can identify creative potentialities-of exposure, struggle, and mobilization-that have been directed towards an associative participation and a cultural intervention that generate new possibilities for collective action. The cosmopolitan sense that animates them tries to combine labor problems with the ways of life in the communities.

The second process is centered on the articulation between the global and the local logic. On the one hand, the processes of expansion in the footwear industry and its local impacts have essentially been ruled by the economic demands of the international market, and in this sense their effects can be described as a "localized globalism." On the other hand, and as a consequence, a set of responses have been promoted from the bottom up, responses that are integrated into new networks of solidarity and new modes of struggle-on a global scale but involving local problems and demands-with potentialities for an emancipatory globalization.