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Title
Worker power, state-labour relations and worker identities
Subtitle (en)
Re-conceptualising social upgrading in global value chains
Language
English
Description (en)
Poor working conditions are widespread in global value chains (GVCs). In GVC research, the concept of social upgrading aims to understand how working conditions may improve focusing on lead firm strategies and inter-firm governance in GVCs, often seeing social upgrading as a result of economic upgrading by supplier firms. Building on work criticizing this understanding of social upgrading, we re-conceptualise social upgrading through the lens of worker power exercised at the intersection of transnational relations on a vertical dimension and local relations on a horizontal dimension. We focus in particular on the embeddedness of worker power within state-labour relations and the intersectionality of worker identities along the horizontal dimension to explain why social up- and downgrading occurs in GVCs. Case study analyses of the apparel sectors in Cambodia and Vietnam employ this re-conceptualization. In both cases, worker power expressed in strike action was a key causal driver of social upgrading; and in both, the outcomes were critically shaped by shifting state-labour relations and intersections of class and worker identities linked to gender, household and community relations.
Keywords (en)
global value chain, social upgrading, worker power, state, intersectionality, apparel, Cambodia, Vietnam
Author of the digital object
Kristoffer  Marslev  (Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna)
Author of the digital object
Cornelia  Staritz  (Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna)
Author of the digital object
Gale  Raj-Reichert  (Bard College Berlin)
Format
application/pdf
Size
470.1 kB
Licence Selected
All rights reserved
Type of publication
Working Paper
Organization Association
Faculty of Social Sciences > Department of Development Studies
Name of Publication (de)
ie.publications
Series Title
ie.WorkingPaper
Number
No. 13
Publishing Address
Wien
Publisher
Institut für Internationale Entwicklung (IE)
Publication Date
2021-11
Content
Details
Object type
PDFDocument
Format
application/pdf
Created
12.09.2022 03:09:58
This object is in collection
Metadata