IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v37y2016i10p1809-1833.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Working at the margins of global production networks: local labour control regimes and rural-based labourers in South India

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Pattenden

Abstract

This article analyses why informal labourers working ‘at the margins’ of global production networks lack ‘structural’ and ‘associational’ power. It does so in order to better understand potential changes in their material and political conditions, and as part of broader calls to put labour at the centre of development studies. The article focuses on rural-based labourers in south India who work relatively invisibly as agricultural labourers and informal factory workers, and on the construction sites of a ‘global city’ (Bangalore). It deploys a three-way labour control regime framework that encompasses (1) the macro-labour control regime, which is ultimately defined by capitalist relations of production, and characterised in India by particularly high levels of informality (precarious and largely unregulated work) and segmentation (due to the fragmentary impact of caste); (2) the local labour control regime, which refers to how class relations in specific places are shaped by patterns of accumulation and work (themselves shaped by differences in agro-ecology, irrigation, and remoteness from non-agricultural labour markets), distributions of classes and castes, and the uneven presence of the state; and (3) the labour process, which is increasingly marked by forms of ‘remote control’ marshalled by labour intermediaries. Debate on the macro-labour control regime and on the labour process is well established, but little has been said about local labour control regimes, which are newly defined here and discussed in terms of differences between ‘wetland/circulation zones’ and ‘dryland/commuting zones’. The article identifies locations where labour has greater potential structural and associational power. Increased worker organisation in these areas could have knock-on effects in more ‘obscure’ sites.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Pattenden, 2016. "Working at the margins of global production networks: local labour control regimes and rural-based labourers in South India," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1809-1833, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:10:p:1809-1833
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1191939
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2016.1191939
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2016.1191939?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Oya, Carlos & Schaefer, Florian, 2021. "The politics of labour relations in global production networks: Collective action, industrial parks, and local conflict in the Ethiopian apparel sector," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Sara Stevano, 2023. "The workplace at the bottom of global supply chains as a site of reproduction of colonial relations: Reflections on the cashew‐processing industry in Mozambique," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 496-509, March.
    3. Sara Stevano & Rosimina Ali & Merle Jamieson, 2021. "Essential Work: Using A Social Reproduction Lens to Investigate the Re-Organisation of Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 241, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    4. Tatiana López, 2021. "A practice ontology approach to labor control regimes in GPNs: Connecting ‘sites of labor control’ in the Bangalore export garment cluster," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(5), pages 1012-1030, August.
    5. Shyamain Wickramasingha, 2023. "Geographies of dissociation: informality, ethical codes and fragmented labour regimes in the Sri Lankan apparel industry," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(6), pages 1191-1211.
    6. Tom Barratt & Caleb Goods & Alex Veen, 2020. "‘I’m my own boss…’: Active intermediation and ‘entrepreneurial’ worker agency in the Australian gig-economy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(8), pages 1643-1661, November.
    7. Liam Campling & Alejandro Colás, 2023. "Maritime Labour Regimes in the Neoliberal Era," Development, Palgrave Macmillan;Society for International Deveopment, vol. 66(1), pages 65-75, June.
    8. Patrick Bottazzi & Sébastien Boillat & Franziska Marfurt & Sokhna Mbossé Seck, 2020. "Channels of Labour Control in Organic Farming: Toward a Just Agroecological Transition for Sub-Saharan Africa," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-21, June.
    9. Krzywdzinski, Martin & Lechowski, Grzegorz & Mählmeyer, Valentina, 2019. "Lean Work and Gender Inequalities: Manufacturing Consent at a Multinational Car Plant in Provincial Russia," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 123-141.
    10. Annelien Gansemans & Marijke D’Haese, 2020. "Staying under the radar: constraints on labour agency of pineapple plantation workers in Costa Rica?," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(2), pages 397-414, June.
    11. Itay Noy, 2023. "Unpicking Precarity: Informal Work in Eastern India's Coal Mining Tracts," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 54(1), pages 168-191, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:10:p:1809-1833. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.