Social reproduction, labour exploitation and reproductive struggles for a global political economy of work

Orthodox Marxist analyses have generally excluded social reproduction activities and realms from the study of labour exploitation and value generation. This exclusion has implied that the contributions and hardship of reproductive workers has gone unrecognised. Marxist Feminist analyses, instead, have illustrated how social reproduction generates value and structures exploitation, as it literally produces workers and hence labour-power, crucial to ‘make’ everything else. Scaling up this argument and building on Early Social Reproduction Analyses (ESRA) - whilst also providing a brief roadmap to the various Social Reproduction Approaches (SRAs)- this chapter shows that the recognition of reproductive activities and realms as generators of value is also crucial to understand informalized employment in contemporary capitalism. Today, as processes of labour precarisation and casualisation become increasingly widespread, reproductive activities and realms not only provide unpaid housework to sustain paid work; they also directly expand exploitation rates across the world of work. The recognition of social reproduction as directly linked to exploitation and value generation allows us to establish key links between labour and reproductive struggles and provide a roadmap towards novel forms of labour organising across the productive/reproductive continuum.