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Do Working-Class Women in the Arab Region Benefit from Trade Liberalisation?: Looking at the Export-Oriented Garment Industry in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia
Abstract
Over the last decades, trade liberalisation has been extensively promoted by international agencies and actors around the world, including the Arab region, based on the assumption that it would contribute to promoting growth, jobs, development, democracy and even gender equality. The aim of this article is to rebalance such over-optimistic narratives about trade, taking as a starting point its concrete effects on the working conditions and lives of women workers in the export-oriented garment industry in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Drawing on feminist political economy research and labour studies, the first part of the paper sets out the context in which to understand the impact of trade liberalisation on working-class women by problematising the dominant narrative and presenting the analytical framework that will be used. The second section reviews the empirical evidence documenting how the expansion of garment exports in the three countries has relied entirely on the recruitment of the most powerless women, under precarious and indecent working conditions. The third section examines the trajectories through which trade liberalisation has led to the observed pattern of female exploitation. Using the analytical framework discussed in the first section, it will look at the interplay between the specific structure of the Global Supply Chain in which the three countries are integrated, state policies and existing gendered social relations.
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This article explores two examples of worker housing in India, and compares these with China’s ‘dormitory labour regime’, arguing that these methods of labour accommodation are part of a broader, increasingly global, workplace-residence regime aimed at migrant labour control for the purposes of value extraction. Contrary to previous studies, it argues that China’s system is not unique, but part of the political economy of contemporary global capitalism. Although there exist historical and contextual variations between the two Indian case studies, drawn from the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) garment sector and the Andhra Pradesh electronics industry, as well as between the Indian and Chinese contexts, the aims and many of the outcomes are similar. Moving beyond a focus on the country- and space-specific ‘dormitory labour regime’ facilitates a broader understanding of the crucial role contemporary workplace-residence systems play in enhancing control of migrant labour for the benefit of global accumulation networks.
This article examines workplace bullying and the intensification of labour controls in the clothing supply chain. It appears that extreme forms of bullying are deployed to intensify labour controls, including locking workers in, frequent wage cuts, setting moveable targets and carrying out intense observations. The context of this study is surplus value-starved clothing factories in Bangladesh. Global supply chains' production regimes, the absence of state protections and trade unions enable factory managers to systematically deploy bullying tactics to achieve production targets. Drawing on Burawoy's (1979, 1983, 1985) works, this article advances the debate of how workplace bullying is impacted by wider structural conditions with managerial strategies of coercion in factories. It is argued here that when the state intervenes in the factory only to protect and preserve capitalists' interests, explicitly and implicitly, coercive strategies of control turn into extreme bullying on the shopfloor.
This study is an in-depth analysis of workers’ rights in the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) in Jordan. More specifically, it aims to discover the type and the extent of violations of workers’ rights in garment factories. The study uses and analyzes primary qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with the people mainly responsible for the problem. It also uses secondary quantitative data related to the QIZs collected from the Ministry of Labor (MOL). The Jordanian labor law applies certain rules and regulations that protect workers’ rights (migrants and nationals) in the QIZs according to international standards. However, the findings of this study indicate that there are many violations of various workers’ rights in the garment factories, several of these are considered major rights violations. These transgressions are mostly related to the health of the worker and his financial benefits (wages and contracts) but also include dignity and honor, overworking, harassment and abuse, safety and working conditions, dormitories and nutrition, annual leave and sick leaves, work and residence permits, and freedom of association and strikes. The study suggests that the Government of Jordan (GOJ) should take a more effective role in safeguarding workers’ rights in the QIZs, as well as impose multiple restrictions on the businesses that are incompatible with the laws and regulations. They also should make sure that all laws and regulations that protect workers’ rights are implemented adequately, as well as increase the number of labor and health inspectors in the QIZs and their assessment visits to these zones. Moreover, they should provide protection for the workers to facilitate their access to the justice system, in cases of major violations.
Informal and precarious work remains an enduring reality across the Global South and is growing fast in the North. A recognition that this form of work is the norm globally rather than the exception has ignited debates around analytical frames, activist strategies and development interventions. Engaging with Southern realities, as this special issue aims to do, helps contribute to a better understanding of this rising form of work globally while also providing insights into workers' resistance and development policy limitations. Through detailed case studies from across the Global South, this special issue argues that informal and precarious work needs to be studied as embedded in concrete, historical, political and social contexts. It highlights the heterogeneity and complexity of intersecting social and material relations that underpin informal and precarious work which has crucial implications for class dynamics and political agency of labour.
Gender relations affect economic processes, especially macroeconomic patterns and accumulation trajectories, so capitalism relies on gender construction of societies to further its expansion. For example, changes in women’s involvement in paid and unpaid work impact the extent to which the unpaid care economy subsidizes the formal economy. Failure to recognize this leads to misleading estimates of aggregate labor productivity and its change over time. Similarly, ignoring the gender distribution of cross-border migration can lead to wrong expectations about the patterns of remittance flows during business cycles in the host country.
This article focuses on the part played by Moroccan and Tunisian labour in the 2011 Arab Uprisings and their outcomes, aiming to add fresh evidence to the long-standing debate over the place of social classes in democratisation processes. In Morocco, most labour confederations supported a new constitution that did not alter the undemocratic nature of the political system. In Tunisia, instead, rank-and-file trade unionists successfully rallied the single labour confederation in support of the popular mobilisations, eventually contributing to democratisation. The most important facilitating factor for these divergent processes and outcomes was the different level of working-class power existing in the two countries. On the eve of the Uprisings, working-class power was higher in Tunisia than in Morocco and this enabled Tunisian workers to mobilise more effectively. Democratisation in Tunisia, however, has so far failed to address the demands for social justice that were at the core of the Uprisings.
Refugee response planners no longer frame Syrian refugees merely as objects of humanitarian care. Increasingly they are portrayed as enterprising subjects, whose formal integration into labor markets simultaneously can create self-sufficient actors and cure the economic woes of host countries. However, bringing together humanitarian and economic agendas is not an easy task. This article analyzes the contradictions and frictions that have emerged in the process of implementing the Jordan Compact, a political commitment to integrate Syrian refugees into the formal Jordanian labor market, and which is supposed to showcase such win-win strategies. It argues that the Jordan Compact should be seen as a policy model that has achieved enough consensus and incorporated enough disparate objectives to be labelled a ‘policy success.’ Yet, central actors have neglected core features of Jordan’s political economy and labor market, and/or the lives and survival strategies of refugees, such that their radical blueprints of transformation have been disrupted. Despite the widespread commitment to the scheme, it is thus unlikely that the Jordan Compact will both reinvigorate the Jordanian economy and offer Syrians the prospect of a dignified, self-sufficient life, an important lesson for comparable schemes being rolled out across the globe.
This article advocates the centrality of labour control to understand the constitutive role of labour and production within global production networks (GPNs). It draws from the global value chain/GPN literature, labour process theory and agrarian political economy to examine the architecture of labour control in the Senegalese–European horticultural GPN through an analysis of local labour control regimes that are constituted at different scales (global, national and local). It frames labour control through the interplay of labour exploitation and disciplining, identifying the different actors, institutions and dynamics shaping labour control and links places of production to broader spaces of labour control. The strong role of the Senegalese state indicates that labour control is closely connected to a broader ‘labour question’ that revolves around the productive/reproductive activities of households and gender subordination. The historical analysis shows the path-dependent, dialectical nature of labour control and labour resistance, and importantly, their dependency on broader production and reproduction relations.
The Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) played a major role in the 2010/11 Tunisian revolution and in the subsequent democratization process. This article seeks to explain why the union was capable of taking on this role in light of the fact that, before the revolution, it cooperated with and was heavily infiltrated by the regime of President Zine El-'Abidine Ben 'Ali. By describing the UGTT's internal struggles during the dictatorship, the article claims that the UGTT demonstrated elements of both resistance and compliance. This duality made it possible for the organization to survive authoritarianism and also be a credible player in the transition to democracy. The article shows, in contrast to the dominant theories within democratization studies, that a regime-affiliated civil society organization can play an important role in the democratization process.
Why have twenty years of efforts to improve working conditions and protect workers’ rights in global supply chains for apparel products been mostly unsuccessful? We argue that this is because extant efforts to increase labor compliance have focused on the practices of suppliers and the countries in which they reside while ignoring the larger supply chain dynamics affecting apparel producers. Any initiative to eradicate sweatshop conditions in clothing factories worldwide must recognize that the buyer-driven dynamic of the apparel supply chain results in systematic cost pressures that are conducive to violations of workers’ rights. We first develop this argument by exploring the relationship between the price lead firms pay for imported apparel and respect for global workers’ rights in today’s top apparel-exporting countries. We then turn our attention to a historical analysis of how the sourcing dynamics and the pricing practices of lead firms, and the unequal bargaining relations between buyers and suppliers that underlie them, were addressed in the United States by a system of “jobbers agreements” throughout much of the twentieth century. Jobbers agreements, which were the driving force behind a dramatic improvement in wages and working conditions for domestic garment workers, constrained buyer power in two ways: 1) by insuring that lead firms paid the contractors a fair price; and 2) by stabilizing and regulating subcontracting relationships. We conclude by asking how these same principles might be applied in the context of today’s global supply chains for apparel products.
The expansion of ‘Greater Chinese’ capital from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan into other parts of the developing world is increasingly noted. It is especially prominent in sub-Saharan Africa where Greater Chinese investments, firms and workers are found across a wide range of activities, from the extractive commodity sectors, to infrastructure projects, agriculture and manufacturing. One region where Greater Chinese investment is less well studied is the Middle East. This article focuses on the case of Jordan. Jordan has rapidly emerged as an important supplier of apparel to the United States, a consequence of a distinct preferential trade agreement. The article charts the ways in which this preferential trade agreement has stimulated the shifts of Greater Chinese garment manufacturers to Jordan. Using a global production networks (GPN) framework, and drawing on primary and secondary evidence, it assesses the dynamics behind Greater Chinese investments into Jordan; it also explores the ways in which Greater Chinese garment producers operating in Jordan organize their supply chains and are linked into the global garments GPNs. Finally, it considers the relationship between such capital flows and the influx of Asian migrant workers into the Jordanian export garment sector.
Business now plays an increasingly prominent role in development. While the implicit links between private actors and international development institutions have been widely debated, the explicit role of financial corporations in shaping official development policy has been less well documented. We employ a feminist Marxian analysis to examine the material and discursive landscape of the 2012 World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development. Its exclusive focus on gender equality as ‘smart economics’, and the central role accorded to leading financial corporations like Goldman Sachs in the formulation of the key World Bank recommendations enable us to explore the changing landscape of the neoliberal corporatisation of development. We argue, first, that the apolitical and ahistorical representation of gender and gender equality in the wdr serves to normalise spaces of informality and insecurity, thereby expunging neoliberal-led capitalist relations of exploitation and domination, which characterise the social context in which many women in the global South live. Second, the wdr represents the interest of corporations in transforming the formerly excluded segments of the South (women) into consumers and entrepreneurs. The wdr thus represents an attempt by the World Bank and its ‘partners’ to deepen and consolidate the fundamental values and tenets of capitalist interests.
This paper examines how two, potentially opposing trends—pressure to adhere to international labor standards and movement
toward greater labor market flexibility—have affected labor market characteristics in the Middle East. Focusing on 13 countries,
the paper presents indices of de jure and de facto labor flexibility and standards in the region. The paper makes two main
contributions. First, it develops a typology of post-independence Middle Eastern political economies based on oil dependence
and political regime type (including oil monarchies, low-income republics, and low-income monarchies) to explain widely divergent
sub-regional trends in labor flexibility and standards. Second, it argues that different actors have spurred changes in labor
flexibility and standards in distinct sub-regional political economy groupings. In the low-income countries, the state and
domestic business were most instrumental in driving increased flexibility, although unions were able to win concessions in
countries where the political system permitted some voice for labor. In the oil monarchies, international pressure, particularly
through negotiations over trade agreements with the USA, spurred a trend toward increased labor standards, while domestic
programs to indigenize the workforce account for a trend toward decreased flexibility.
KeywordsLabor standards-Flexibility-Labor reform-Middle East
This article builds on critiques of the concept of social upgrading in global value chain (GVC) research, which problematize its coupling to lead firm strategies and economic upgrading by supplier firms, by reconceptualizing social upgrading through the lens of worker power. It argues that a better understanding of the causal processes of social upgrading can be obtained by integrating insights from labour geography, which situates worker agency at the intersection of a ‘vertical’ dimension of transnational relations and a ‘horizontal’ dimension of local relations, with conceptualizations of worker power from (global) labour studies, particularly the modes of structural and associational power. The authors call for a deeper theorization of the places in which GVCs ‘touch down’, arguing that worker power is decisively shaped by state–labour relations as well as the intersectionality of worker identities and interlinkages between spheres of production and reproduction. Case study analyses of the apparel sectors in Cambodia and Vietnam employ this reconceptualization, drawing on the authors’ own fieldwork. In both cases, worker power expressed in strike action was a key causal driver of social upgrading; and in both, the outcomes were conditioned by GVC dynamics as well as shifting state–labour relations and intersections of worker identities linked to gender, household and community relations.
Worker rights abuses in garment global supply chains have long been acknowledged in the literature (Barrientos et al., 2003; Bonacich and Appelbaum, 2000). What has been less explored is the recent growth in certain decent work deficits and its causes. This article links this growth to predatory purchasing practices tied to growing power asymmetries. As illustrated through the case study of the garment export sector in India, these predatory practices have resulted in downward pressure not only on wages, but also an increase in non‐standard work and greater verbal and physical abuse tied to increased productivity demands. Addressing these practices requires transforming purchasing practices through pricing mechanisms that cover the cost of decent work, appropriate state regulation, and worker involvement.
Cambridge Core - Political Economy - Gender and Work in Global Value Chains - by Stephanie Barrientos
The proliferation of global value chains is portrayed in academic and policy circles as representing new development opportunities for firms and regions in the global south. This article tests these claims by examining original material from non-governmental organizations’ reports and secondary sources on the garment and electronics chains in Cambodia and China, respectively. This empirical evidence suggests that these global value chains generate new forms of worker poverty. Based on these findings, the article proposes the novel Global Poverty Chain approach. The article critiques and reformulates principal concepts associated with the Global Value Chain approach – of value-added, rent and chain governance – and challenges a core assumption prevalent within Global Value Chain analysis: that workers’ low wages are a function of their employment in low productivity industries. Instead, it shows that (1) many supplier firms in the global south are as, or more, productive than their equivalents in the global north; (2) often predominantly female workers in these industries are super exploited (paid wages below their subsistence requirements) and (3) chain governance represents a lead firm value-capturing strategy, which intensifies worker exploitation.
Drawing on approaches to class stressing the multiplicity of labour relations at work under capitalism and from feminist insights on oppression and social reproduction, this paper illustrates the interconnection between processes of class formation and patriarchal norms in globalised production circuits. The analysis emphasises the nexus between the commodification and exploitation of women's labour, and how it structures gendered-‐ wage differentials, labour control, and the high 'disposability' of women's work. The analysis develops these arguments by exploring the case of the Indian garment industry and its gendered sweatshop regime. It illustrates how commodification and exploitation interplay in factory and home-‐based realms, and discusses how an approach on class premised on social reproduction changes the social perimeters of what we understand as labour 'unfreedom' and labour struggles.
In Morocco today, the idea of female laborers is generally frowned upon. Yet despite this, many women are beginning to find work in factories. Laetitia Cairoli spent a year in the ancient city of Fes; Girls of the Factory tells the story of what life is like for working women. Forced to find a factory job herself so that she could speak more intimately with working women, she was able to learn firsthand why they work, what working means to them, and how important earning a wage is to their sense of self. Cairoli conveys a general sense of the working life of women in Morocco by describing daily life inside a Moroccan sewing factory. She also reveals the additional work they face inside their homes. More than an ethnography, this volume is also for those who want to better understand what life is like for a new generation of young women just entering the workforce.
This article seeks to examine two inter-related dynamics, the relationship between the international dispersion of apparel production and labor control regimes, and the relationship between labor control regimes and patterns of worker resistance. The article argues that where apparel production has concentrated in the last decade has as much to do with labor control regimes as with wages and other economic factors. It suggests that there are three main labor control regimes in the sector: state control, market despotism, and employer repression. The article then argues that these systems of labor control are conducive to three patterns of worker resistance: wildcat strikes, international accords, and cross-border campaigns. The article explores these arguments by examining examples of apparel global supply chains in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Honduras.
For some time now, calls have been made for a more adequate theorization of the state and institutional frameworks in work on global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs). However, despite claims in GPN research that institutional contexts matter, there remains an absence of theoretical frameworks on the state in GPNs. Consequently, understanding of the relations between state action and the changing geographies of production networks remains in its infancy. This paper explores a strategic-relational understanding of the state and the rearticulation of scales of state formation to understand the dynamics of global production networks in macro-regional spaces.
Over the last two decades the global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) frameworks have facilitated valuable research into contemporary global capitalism. However, much of this research has paid insufficient attention to work and workers. Recently, the concept of social upgrading, with a strong emphasis on workers’ conditions, has been advanced by leading GCC/GVC/GPN theorists, as a potential remedy to the previous lacunae. This article welcomes this development, but also argues that the social upgrading concept represents an elite comprehension of relations between capital, the state and labour. It is argued that the concept, derived from the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda, denies the reality of labour’s exploitation by capital and is therefore only partially equipped to explain the existence of indecent work. The Decent Work Agenda and the social upgrading concept expect improvements in work to be delivered by elite actors such as firms, national states and international organizations. It is argued that, through re-visiting Marx’s explication of the capitalist labour process, it is possible to comprehend the nature of capitalist exploitation, the root causes of indecent work and resistance to it, and thus to develop an alternative conception of social upgrading. The article presents evidence from North East Brazilian export horticulture to support these arguments.
This study is about Tunisian women's work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. The focus of this article is dissertation research conducted in 2008–2009, with the assistance of a grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, on working women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia. Tunisia's economic Infitah, opening to free trade, has meant new opportunities for Tunisian women. However, it is problematic to conflate women's ‘empowerment’ with labour force participation. Women in this study, those fortunate enough to find employment, often earn wages which maintain their dependency on male family members. Those working in informal economic production in traditionally gendered forms of work were also likely to earn little. Further, the possibilities for Bizerte women to seek social and economic power beyond traditional boundaries can lead to new chances for women to demand equality, but they often also exacerbate class stratification. While women of various class positions may find more economic opportunities, they must budget against structural adjustment schemes which include currency devaluation and price hikes on staples. Finally, women's often acquiesce to conservative social values, and frequently sabotage one another through gossip and magic. Such findings challenge the argument that women have achieved increased equality in the neoliberal, pre-Jasmine Revolution Tunisia.
The role of labour in global production networks (GPNs) requires further theoretical and empirical research. Through the case of the qualifying industrial zones (QIZs) in Egypt and Jordan, I look at how different production and labour control regimes have emerged in the two countries to exploit preferential access to the US market. I analyse how the requirements of US buyers necessitate the building of a flexible, low-cost, geographically mobile production and labour-control regime that can meet the needs of buyers in terms of cost, time to market, fluctuations in demand and shifts in sourcing policy. Migrant labour from Asia and the formation of an associated dormitory labour regime facilitated the establishment of such a regime in Jordan. The social embeddedness of workers in Egypt, by contrast, hindered this process.
Processes of economic liberalization and dynamics of women’s employment in Tunisia
In spite of the noticeable progress made in the legislation and in education, growth in the level of activity of Tunisian women has been only slow over the past three decades, a rate indicative of the difficulty of gaining access to the jobs market. Women in activity are also affected by unemployment more severely and for longer. They are more likely to have recourse to seasonal jobs and to be on low-paid work. Moreover, economic restructuring and the opening-up of markets hit particularly hard the sectors that most frequently employ women. The current trends highlight the extreme vulnerability of women’s employment to economic disturbances linked to free-market trends, and also an increasing precariousness of the posts obtained in the public services. Faced with the massive influx of women on the employment market, public policies are shown to be scarcely adequate for improving their rate of integration into the country’s economic life.
This study is about Tunisian women's work and lives in the present era of economic neoliberalism. The focus is women in the city of Bizerte, Tunisia, both those who work in Bizerte's export processing zone (EPZ), as well as those who work outside it. This study is a qualitative examination of formal and informal employment, set inside and outside of women's traditional political and economic domain, the home. Through ethnography of women's work and lives, this study's purpose is to contribute evidence against conflating women's "empowerment" with incorporation into global production. However, this study also lends itself to considerations of the possibilities for exertions of power, powers that women in Bizerte now seek that opened through the forces of globalization.
This paper contributes to the global production networks (GPNs) literature by analyzing the relationship between economic upgrading (increase in the value added of production) and social upgrading (improvements for workers in GPNs). It does so by drawing on primary data from Moroccan garment supplier firms, showing that economic upgrading can lead to social upgrading with mixed outcomes. Especially in a fast fashion model, the most advanced form of economic upgrading, functional upgrading, often translates into social upgrading and downgrading simultaneously for different workers. This is due to contradictory commercial requirements imposed by global buyers in GPNs.
The neglect of questions of informality in the study of global production networks (GPNs) is curious given the scale and reach of informality in the contemporary global economy. In this article I advocate a tighter integration of informality into the questions and approaches we deploy in the study of GPNs, not simply as an empirical area of enquiry but also in theorizing, first, how GPNs work and, second, with what social consequences. Drawing on ‘structuralist’ insights into the relationship between informality and formality in capitalist economies, I argue for a recognition of the ways in which these are structurally blended with one another to the extent that their dichotomization is empirically and theoretically misconceived. I go on to explore the ways in which informality is created and exploited within GPNs in a ‘top–down’ manner – that is, by capital, firms, employers and states – and the ‘bottom–up’ dynamics of informality, which frequently are constitutive of ‘adverse incorporation’ in GPNs for large numbers of workers, generating and perpetuating forms of poverty, marginalization and vulnerability.
Summaries Gender is often overlooked in the analysis of global value chains. Analysis of value chains incorporates all aspects from design, through production to final distribution and consumption. These activities are embedded within prevailing gender relations that affect value chains at every node. Conversely the operation of value chains can affect the prevailing gender division of labour in different localities. This article provides an initial contribution to an analysis of gender and value chains, drawing on the example of the horticultural value chain linking South Africa and Chile to European retail. It explores how flexible female employment at one end of the chain provides supply flexibility in the global chain. At the other end, supermarkets exploit changing working and consumption. patterns to sell high value-added food, previously prepared in the home. Examining the gender dimension provides a much more comprehensive analysis of value chains, through which all aspects of their functioning can be better understood.
Labor markets are gendered institutions operating at the intersection of the productive and reproductive economies. Participation in labor markets does not automatically empower women. Reduction in gender differentials in earnings may be the result of harmonizing down rather than up. Discrimination against women may persist because, in the absence of institutional changes, it is profitable. It is important to distinguish between static and dynamic, and micro- and macro-efficiency. Labor market regulation has an important role to play in the institutional transformation needed to reconcile goals of efficiency and equality.
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