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How do lead firms on fast fashion supply chains cut costs by exploiting women workers and the environment? How does the structure of global value chains in contemporary capitalism facilitate these injustices? How does an understanding of reverse subsidies help us to challenge supply chain exploitation? How can we transform this system?<\/p>\n
I am extremely excited to share our new book – Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism: Gender, Labour, and Environmental Injustice in Garment Value Chains. Based on five years of field work, we use the concept of reverse subsidies to explain the purchase of gendered labour and environmental services by lead firms in garment value chains below their costs of production. The resulting higher profits from the low prices of garments are captured by global fashion brands, using their monopsony position, with few buyers and myriad sellers in the market. On the basis of this research, we link the concept of reverse subsidies with those of injustice, inequality, and sustainability in global production.<\/p>\n
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\u2018Scroll. Click. Suffer.\u2019 is an in-depth investigation into the hidden workforce behind AI and social media\u2014data labellers and content moderators. Based on interviews with 113 workers across Colombia, Kenya, and the Philippines, the report exposes the extreme occupational, psychological, sexual, and economic harms faced by those moderating violent content and training AI models for platforms like Meta, TikTok, and ChatGPT. From PTSD and substance dependency to union-busting and exploitative contracts, it reveals an industry architecture that normalises harm and conceals abuse. Tech giants outsource risk down opaque, informal supply chains, while workers are silenced by NDAs, punished for speaking out, and denied basic protections. Grounded in worker testimonies and legal analysis, the report outlines a clear roadmap for reform\u2014and calls on lead firms, investors, governments, and the ILO to centre the rights of digital workers<\/p>\n
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People who mobilize to protect their rights in highly oppressive contexts may have to navigate government institutions that not only fail to implement protections, but also reproduce discriminatory practices. This paper introduces the term circumventive legal resistance to describe practices of making legally grounded claims but facilitating relief through processes of expression and negotiation that are distinct from explicit mechanisms of legal enforcement. Based upon a study of 27 rural, semi-rural, and urban areas across the north and north-west regions of India, this paper documents how Dalit \u2014a self-designated term for so-called \u201cuntouchables\u201d who occupy the lowest place in the caste system\u2014women mobilize to protect their rights in contexts where local institutions do not enforce laws prohibiting caste discrimination and instead reproduce caste-based forced labor practices. In particular, I focus on a campaign to end manual scavenging\u2014a form of caste-based forced labor that is one of the worst surviving symbol of untouchability. With local channels to legal relief largely foreclosed, Dalit women who leave manual scavenging engage in circumventive legal resistance: they draw on law to make claims but win relief through avenues distinct from those envisioned within the parameters of the law.<\/p>\n
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This paper introduces the term zones of compounded informality to demarcate locations wherein regulatory exclusions in distinct domains interact to escalate the impact of exclusions for people who live and work in these areas. Based upon a study of India\u2019sDelhi, National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR), I explain how the interaction of flexible planning and employment in particular locales produce zones of compounded informality as a technique of governance. Circular migrant workers in Delhi-NCR overwhelmingly live and work in these zones, wherein unstable employment and housing contribute to nomadic migration. Legal exclusion from housing protections interacts with other procedural pathways, creating barriers to accessing social protection and citizenship rights. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation, interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and a survey of 981 workers, I consider how zones of compounded informality in Delhi-NCR interact with India\u2019s Aadhar biometric identification system to variegate access to the franchise and Targeted Public Distribution System (PDS) for migrant and other low-wage workers.<\/p>\n
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Persistent exploitation of farmworkers is a defining problem of our time. An estimated 32 percent of the global population is employed in agriculture. At the base of global food systems, agricultural workers sustain the world\u2019s population while systematically excluded from labor rights protections. Through an analysis of restrictions on labor rights for agricultural workers in 110 countries, this article distills a typology of legal exclusion that persists to date across the globe. These exclusions articulate with labor exploitation at the base of agri-food supply chains, and economic and social hierarchies constructed by race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and migration status. How can we upend this legal architecture of oppression, rooted in racialized and gendered capitalism? The global understanding advanced in this article is critical to dismantling legal architectures of oppression. At the national level, it provides a framework for identifying and addressing layered mechanisms of legal exclusion in their own jurisdictions. Moreover, since agricultural supply chains operate globally, it provides importance guidance for protecting workers rights on agri-food supply chains, including through binding due diligence legislation in headquarter economies of lead firms, enforceable brand agreements, and inclusion of labor rights in food safety and environmental standards. Finally, due to the structure of monopsony capitalism, in order to raise the floor for agricultural workers worldwide, legal exclusions must be ratcheted up across jurisdictions. Global analysis, then, provides a roadmap for strengthening international standards and global campaigns.<\/p>\n
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