Exploitation and global value chains

Concerns about exploitation in global supply chains are increasingly central to public and academic agendas. These issues have been investigated over the last 15 years from global value chain and global production network perspectives (henceforth ‘chain’ analysis). The majority of chain analysis, however, portrays exploitation as something that can be ‘cured’ i.e. extrinsic to the operations of the world of value chains and production networks, as opposed to inherent to it. In this chapter we show how throughout global production - in Indian garments, African horticulture and oceanic shipping that bring such commodities to their markets - exploitation appears as an increasingly complex process, shaped by combinations of social relations, actors and institutions. We show how dynamics of exploitation extend beyond the production process into spheres of social reproduction, the globalisation of production and chain governance, and the social relations of credit and finance.