Mirela Barbu

University of Sussex · Department of Management

This article explores the interrelationship between global production networks (GPNs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) in the South Korean auto industry and its employment relations. It focuses on the production network of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) — the third biggest automobile manufacturer in the world — and the FTA between the EU and South K...

Labour standards provisions contained within the European Union's (EU) free trade agreements (FTAs) are a major iteration of attempts to regulate working conditions in the global economy. This article develops an analysis of how the legal and institutional mechanisms established by these FTAs intersect with global value chain governance dynamics in...

Labour standards provisions within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are presented as a key element of the EU's commitment to a ‘value-based trade agenda’. But criticism of TSD chapters has led the European Commission to commit to improving their implementation and enforcement, creating a critic...

This article examines the relations between workplace and local labor regimes, global production networks (GPNs), and the state-led creation of expanded markets as spaces of capitalist regulation through trade policy. Through an examination of the ways in which labor regimes are constituted as a result of the articulation of local social relations...

The EU has established a new architecture of international labour standards governance within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of its Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). To examine the operationalization of this framework, we draw upon 121 interviews undertaken with key informants in three FTAs signed with the Caribbean, South Korea a...

Since 2000 Prato's domestic textile sector has contracted in the face of international competition. From the 1990s a large Chinese community has emerged, and since 2000 the number of Chinese clothing enterprises has increased rapidly. In recent years tensions between the Italian and Chinese communities have increased, and police investigations have...

Amongst developed countries, Italy is unusual in that it has maintained a specialisation in traditional industries such as textiles and clothing (TCI). Explanations of Italy’s unusual industrial profile mainly emphasise the role of endogenous economic and cultural resources. Globalisation in the 1990s and 2000s saw slow growth and a significant dec...