Duemila: a cineforum on labour exploitation and collective action

Abstract Why do workers who see themselves as exploited stay away from collective action? This article introduces the cineforum , a group film screening followed by a focus group discussion, as a novel qualitative visual method for exploring that question. Four self-employed workers in Spain’s food retail sector watched Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento (1976),an epic or rural working-class struggle in early twentieth-century Italy, and set the characters' world against their own. The discussion revealed how they explain, excuse or legitimise their distance from collective action, and pointed to four significant obstacles to mobilisation today: the separation of work and private life, the absence of a shared working-class identity, the lack of an identifiable antagonist, and distrust in the institutions and leadership of labour organising. As an exploratory case study, the article also reflects on the benefits and limitations of the cineforum as a research method. It argues that watching a film together can open conversations that conventionally interviews rarely reach, particularly with groups far removed from academic settings.