ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a detailed analysis of the discursive patterns articulated by the European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF) in the interrelated policy fields of space and defence during the period 2002–2004 – a formative period for EU armaments and military space policy. The main empirical finding is that labour, in the form of the EMF, offered its wholehearted support to every single move that the EU institutions undertook with the arms and space industry to strengthen the latter’s competitive status. The chapter argues that the discursive regularities and the maintenance of a stable, pro-industrial stance at the core of labour’s rhetoric cannot be explained satisfactorily by frame analysis. Such a set of patterns is instead the outcome of the exercise of hegemony by internationalised military–industrial capital through the mediation of ideology and the incorporation of labour into a web of interconnections that may fall under the notion of an EU politico-military–industrial complex.
