Phillips, N., et al (2014) The social foundations of global production networks: towards
a global political economy of child labour
1. What does the article examine?
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Child labour occur in the context of global production networks (GPNs),
Commercial and social dynamics in GPNs give rise to these forms of labour
exploitation
Organization and functioning of GPNs, and the social foundations on
which they rest
The concept of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy
2. Why, as the authors’ claim, is child labour a result of the household being adversely
incorporated into global production?
There are workers whose inclusion through employment in global economic activity
does not lead to a reduction in poverty and vulnerability. Instead, their adversity is
reinforced and their conditions of poverty become entrenched over the long term. In the
non-factory segment, Child labour is concentrated in the non-factory household sector.
This sector is excluded from national legislation on child labour. Although leading
firms have taken steps to address child labour in their supply chains, it persists.
3. How does MNCs like GAP benefit from child labour?
The Delhi garments sector uses child labour for global production, e.g., Gap used forced
and trafficked child labour in manufacturing clothing for Gap (2007).
In order to deal with the public and international pressure, garment industries moved the
child and the female workers to the non-factory sector, e . g . , work m o v e d t o
workers’ home locations.
While reorganizing the value chains in the garments industry harnessed the
marginalized workers, e.g., informal and feminized adults and
impoverished children as workers.
4. What were the 2 groups of households studied?
In a sample of 220 households: 19 household enterprises – units where employees
work and live along with the employers. 2 0 1 w e r e ‘home-based’ units with family
members as workers.
5. How many were child workers?
In the 201 ‘home-based’ households: in total 552 children, 370 of them between 5–14
years old.
6. How is child lab defined in this paper?
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Children who substantially contribute as workers in productive and reproductive
activities, for which the child may or may not receive, direct payment.
7. What is adverse incorporation?
There are workers whose inclusion through employment in global economic activity
does not lead to a reduction in poverty and vulnerability. Instead, their adversity is
reinforced and their conditions of poverty become entrenched over the long term.
In the nature of capitalism, there is uneven growth of upgrading or downgrading of
some sectors vs other sectors of the economy. Some groups of workers are upgraded
while others may be ‘downgraded’ as participation in GPNs can generate new
employment and income opportunities and better working conditions for vulnerable
workers, but, for many others, is characterized by precarious and unprotected
forms of employment, high levels of exploitation and, in some cases, enslaved
labour. This is referred to as ‘adverse incorporation’: the immediate, practical needs
of short-term survival is adverse to the possibilities for longer-term accumulation or
security and the enhancement of human capabilities.
7. What are the exploitative foundations of economic accumulation in GPNs, which
shape the dynamics of adverse incorporation?
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Embeddedness: how production networks are embedded in particular kinds of
social and power relations
Social relations are most usefully understood not as deriving from economic
processes
These social relations provide the social context in which exploitation can
become embedded and be reproduced
Exploitation of labour: those kinds of labour relations in which power is
deployed in such a way as to exclude the worker from the value contributed by
her labour, in order to increase the returns to capital and powerful interests.
GPNs that promote accumulation of profit favour the incorporation and
exploitation of child labour.
‘social categorisation’: particular ‘markers’ are used to institutionalize
discrimination and exploitation.
e.g., child labour & household labour - social categorization by gender and
caste
8. What are the characteristics of the market that segments the labour force?
 Value chains are ‘buyer-driven’. Powerful buyers in lead firms determine the
conditions of price and supply
 Labor-intensive sectors, e.g., apparel and textiles, consider efficiency as the
most important for making profits. They rely on strategies of minimizing
labour’s share of contribution to the production and thus depressing wages paid to
labour in order to enhance their profits.
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Develop ‘arm’s-length’ system of production, characterized by high levels of
outsourcing and subcontracting. Production is distributed through out the globe
where cheap labour is available. The production process is s e p a r a t e d
according to the functions of production.
Separated elements of production, e.g., the factory segments (firm types 1–3) and
non-factory segments (firm types 4 and 5) of the industry and, moreover,
between the key supplier firms (types 1 and 2) and the subcontractors to those
firms (types 3–5). non-factory segment are uniformly unregistered and,
essentially, beyond the scope of effective regulation for labour standards and
social compliance. (see Table 1).
9. What is subcontracting in the global industries?
See the diagram at http://www.homeworkersww.org.uk/files/sitefiles/supply-chain-italydiagram.pdf
10. Why areas with advertisements of ‘child labour free’ zones, do not tell the whole
truth as child labour continues in those countries?
 Child labour is not commonly found in type 3 firms as they outsource a
considerable amount of embellishment and embroidery work that require skilled
craftsmanship and social compliance.
 It continues in the non-factory segment. Child labour is concentrated in the nonfactory household sector. This sector is excluded from national legislation on
child labour. Although leading firms have taken steps to address child labour in
their supply chains, it persists.
e.g. Of the 201 ‘home-based’ households sampled, 68.82% reported some form of child
labour, and 83% of the 370 children aged between five and 14 years in these
households were reported to be engaged in some form of income-generating activity.
These child workers are heavily concentrated in the garments sector.
Table 2. Main and secondary activities of child workers (% of total children
covered by survey sample).
Main activity
Secondary activity
5–11
years
Self-employed
Worker/helper in household enterprise
(garments)
Construction
Restaurants/retail trade
Others
Only domestic work
School pupil
Not relevant
Total
12–14
years
Total
5–11
years
12–14
years
Total
0.00
6.45
1.41
28.17
0.98
21.57
2.00
96.00
2.30
78.16
2.19
84.67
0.00
0.00
3.23
3.23
83.87
3.23
100.00
1.41
2.11
15.49
3.52
47.89
0.00
100.00
0.98
1.47
11.76
3.43
58.82
0.98
100.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.00
0.00
0.00
100.00
0.00
0.00
2.30
16.09
1.15
0.00
100.00
0.00
0.00
1.46
10.95
0.73
0.00
100.00
11. How does informalization result in the decline of directly employed workers?
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Informalisation, India’s industrial policy since 1990s, deregulated the private
sector and imposed greater discipline on labour.
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This increased the subcontracting to small-scale units or marginalised areas
where enforcement of existing laws were minimal.
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As a result, in the Indian garments industry, like in many other sectors across the
global economy, the numbers of directly employed workers have declined
since the late
1990s.
More than half the women in the informal sector are home-based workers (about
80mil)
12. What is the mode of recruiting workers in GNPs?
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Using Labour contractors
Use of advance of wages makes workers become indebted (debt bondage)
Paying advances on children so that they will be tied to the contract
13. Why are the wages of the workers depressed?
 Competition for work as a result of oligopolistic buying power
 Monopsonist can dictate terms to its suppliers, as the only purchaser of a good
or service, much in the same manner that a monopolist is said to control the
market for its buyers in a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers.
 The bargaining power of these workers within the value chain is thereby severely
circumscribed: women workers in home-based units, for instance, will be obliged
to accept just about any deal if it means securing work.
 Employers seek systematically to depress the wages and benefits of contract,
casual and seasonal workers, while maintaining maximum flexibility in terms of
numbers employed at any given moment. Thus, the incentives for the
incorporation of child labour are embedded in these conditions, both for
employers and for households.
 Child workers either contribute to the creation of value and profit through their
unpaid labour, or else are paid at levels substantially below those of adult
workers performing similar tasks, or on a scale which sees the rate of pay
decline as hours increase. Child workers are in general the members of the labour
force that have least bargaining power and ability to negotiate the labour
market; this vulnerability is heightened for migrant child workers, where their
labour is usually purchased on the basis of advances or debts.
14. How does social categorization facilitate profit accumulation at two levels: 1.
Corporate profit 2. Subcontractors’ profit?
Workers’ and children’s Poverty and vulnerability are used to accumulate profits at
each level using social categorization and hiring power.
Tilly’s argument: ‘inequality-generating mechanisms’ of categorization and exclusion,
are based on gender, age, race, ethnicity, caste, religion, and so on,
Those who possess social power – t h e c o r p o r a t i o n a n d s u b c o n t r a c t o r - in
order to control access to ‘value-producing resources’. They have monopoly in
hiring and setting wages.
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15. Why families need their children to work?
Child labour flourishes, in households that had a per capita income that was on average
25% below the US$2/day poverty line,
households without child labour had a per capita income about 50% above this
poverty line ( see Table 6).
This is similar to the h o u s e h o l d c o n d i t i o n s o f child labour in Vietnam and
Brazil
16. Why do the children work and not able to go to school?
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85% of the children had to work primarily because of the need to supplement the
household income.
The contribution of child workers to household income in our study is only
around 10%. In 17% of cases children were obliged to abandon schooling in order
to work.
Young children aged 5–11, predominantly girls, could not attend school as they
had to care for their siblings while their parents and older children in the family
worked as cheap labour.
17. What are the causes of gender inequalities in the garment industry?
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Women’s access to work is more restricted, and they lack the power effectively to
negotiate with contractors and employers to improve their conditions of work,
wages and access to rights.
Social pressures to remain confined to the home, often cast as concerns for
women’s safety outside it.
Factory operations, prioritizes men as the skilled workers associated with activities like
tailoring or stitching, and effectively excludes women from participation.
18. What are the inequalities based on caste and class?
Households classified as OBC and SC constituted 60% of households with child labour,
This shows a concentration of child labour as these are in the most socially marginalised
sections of the population.
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http://www.women-ww.org/documents/www_education_pack.pdf
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http://www.fibre2fashion.com/industry-article/21/2031/popup1.html
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