The EU and Multidimensional Forms of Power: Critical Moments and Change in Actorness and Power

This article introduces a framework for studying the European Union (EU) as power by focusing on what EU does rather than what EU is. Conceptualizing EU as a regional international society, EU is constituted along multidimensional lines. While a code of conduct limits internal and external practices, critical moments are important junctures for practitioners to reinterpret norms and rules, leading to the reproduction of EU as power. The practice of minority rights illustrates how a lack of intersubjectivity limits the EU’s power. It is first through practitioners’ engagement with norms and rules that new practices are established.     

Corporate power,US drug enforcement and the repression of indigenous peoples in Latin America

Abstract

The question that motivates this article is: what are the mechanisms through which the prosecution of the drug war in Latin America lead to human rights repression? In answering this question, I theorise that drug enforcement is a coalition of actors that facilitates domestic and international consensus around prohibition as a mechanism for corporate expansion. Drug war infrastructure financing is likely to facilitate the expansion of corporate investments by resource-seeking industries that require greater land use, which encroaches on the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples. And, in response to indigenous resistance to corporate appropriation of ancestral lands, resource-seeking transnational corporations will collude with private security firms and paramilitary organisations to repress and eliminate indigenous resistance. In the process of accumulating capital in Latin America, transnational corporations, domestic security, and paramilitary organizations are the drug enforcement coalition’s mediators of terror.     

Transnational Private Governance as a Developmental Driver in Southeast Asia: The Case of Sustainable Palm Oil Standards in Indonesia and Malaysia

This paper explores why and how voluntary private sustainability governance initiated by corporations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) extends its regulatory purview to incorporate developmental strategies aimed at upgrading smallholder practices. Using the case of palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia and by extending insights from club theory, global production networks, and developmental states, the paper identifies the conditions under which private regulatory standards catalyse private developmental interventions that are nevertheless analogous to the industrial policies, financial incentives, and institutions of the classic developmental states. It was when the credibility of private sustainability standards was challenged by the low-yielding and environmentally-unsustainable cultivation practices of smallholder growers of palm oil that private governors and globally-oriented palm oil corporations who depend on smallholder suppliers worked with NGOs to support smallholder agricultural upgrading, in turn enhancing productivity, sustainable cultivation practices, and livelihoods. Such private developmental interventions involve supply chain mapping, knowledge service partnerships, and brokered overarching meta-partnerships that may be regarded as functional analogues of classic developmental state practices and institutions, namely performance monitoring, technological support, and coordination of multiple actors to form wider innovation networks.     

Dangerous Places and Nimble Fingers: Discourses of Gender Discrimination and Rights in Global Corporations

This paper considers how women's employment rights are being constructed in multinational corporations by examining three high-tech organizations—a U.S. company in Silicon Valley, its subsidiary in New Delhi, India, and a comparable local Indian company. It first describes the legal frameworks for addressing gender employment discrimination by state governments in India and the United States. Then it examines how these frameworks are appropriated and negotiated within the local contexts of the workplaces in the study. Finally, it reflects on recent transnational attempts to legislate and enforce women's employment rights in multinational corporations, specifically the challenges that such attempts face in light of the three case studies.     

Who owns the right to food? Interlegality and competing interests in agricultural modernisation in Papua,Indonesia

Economic globalisation has transformed the politics of realising the right to food. This article aims to discuss the extent to which competing as well as conjoined interests in agricultural modernisation reconfigure the right to food as actors, norms and practices change. Drawing upon the concept of interlegality, which considers dynamic perspectives of plural legal orders, the discussion focuses on, first, existing norms linked to the wider understanding of the right to food and, second, the interplay of interests supported by the state, corporations and civil society organisations. The Indonesian agricultural modernisation project in Papua is used as a case study.     

Dominant Discourses,Debates and Silences on Child Labour in Africa and Asia

Drawing on the relevant literature, this article explores key debates and controversies on child labour in the context of Africa and Asia. It first identifies and analyses three dominant discourses on child labour: 1) the work-free childhoods perspective; 2) the socio-cultural perspective; and 3) the political economy perspective. Against the backdrop of these discourses, the article goes on to critically examine aspects of child labour that are underrepresented in the literature and in international policy circles. It concludes by highlighting the importance of grounding children's gendered work within the complex material social practices of interconnected histories and geographies in which their livelihoods unfold.     

Dominant discourses, debates and silences on child labour in Africa and Asia

Drawing on the relevant literature, this article explores key debates and controversies on child labour in the context of Africa and Asia. It first identifies and analyses three dominant discourses on child labour: 1) the work-free childhoods perspective; 2) the socio-cultural perspective; and 3) the political economy perspective. Against the backdrop of these discourses, the article goes on to critically examine aspects of child labour that are underrepresented in the literature and in international policy circles. It concludes by highlighting the importance of grounding children's gendered work within the complex material social practices of interconnected histories and geographies in which their livelihoods unfold.     

Multinational Corporations in World Development: 40 years on

In light of the 2014 Ecuador-sponsored resolution at the UN Human Rights Council to examine the link between Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, in this paper I review the first major discussion at the United Nations of the role of multinational corporations. The report on Multinational Corporations in World Development (1973) for the UN Department of Economic and Social affair launched the (then) new UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. I examine the report in some detail, compare and contrast this with the Ecuadorian resolution from 2014, and reflect on the continuities and changes in attempts to regulate the conduct of global corporations over the 40 years between these two moments.     

How Much Is Really Known About the Meaning of the Term “Conflict of Interest”?

Often codes of ethics require dealing with conflict of interest (CoI) without defining the boundaries of the phenomenon. In this case, CoI recognition is left to the discretion of the individual. The aim of this work is to answer to the following research questions: How much is really known about the meaning of the term CoI? Do individuals share the same CoI definition? In order to address these questions, we use the results of a questionnaire administered to 86 Italian public sector employees during some training courses on conflict of interest and corruption. The choice of this sample is particularly significant in that the Italian regulation provides for all public employees a code of conduct that requests avoiding, or at least disclosing, the CoI without prior definition of the meaning of the term. The results of our analysis show that public employees are uncertain about or come to different considerations of what CoI is and is not; consequently they deal with it in different ways. Thus, codes of conduct and ethics trainers should direct more attention on CoI definition, providing examples to facilitate its identification and resolution.     

Racing to the bottom: international trade without a social clause

Linking trade concessions to compliance with internationally recognised labour standards is referred to as a ‘social clause’. The social clause is usually depicted as causing division between the (rich) global North and the less-industrialised global South. This article shows, however, that there is diversity of opinion among the labour movements of the global South and that contemporary labour-intensive manufacturing pits countries of the South against one another. The article raises the possibility of a race to the bottom in labour standards, where workers cannot enjoy the fruits of growth because their employers and governments hold on to the competitive advantage of cheap labour. Consider competition between China and Mexico for the North American apparel market: despite enormous employment growth apparel workers have not enjoyed wage growth and their conditions are often appalling. The race to the bottom can be prevented by South–South agreement to honour labour standards.     

Getting to the frontier

This article analyses a Stackelberg differential game in which households' labour supply and fertility decisions are taken assuming husbands as leaders and wives as followers. The model solution yields the optimal number of children and labour supply of male and female. In equilibrium male and female labour supply increases with wage and decreases with children costs and time preference, and the optimal number of children increases with male wage and decreases with cost of children, husband's time preference, and female's wage and time preference. We test the model using Ghana Living Standard Survey Round 4 and find that women are more sensitive to changes in the labour market conditions than males, and better labour market opportunities for women may lead to a strong reduction in fertility.     

Global capitalism and major corporations from the Third World

Most major transnational corporations (TNCs) are domiciled in the First World and are owned and controlled largely by citizens of these countries. On the basis of an analysis of the largest corporations outside the USA by revenues published annually by Fortune magazine since the 1950s, this paper demonstrates that there have been major corporations from the Third World for decades. Most of the literature on Third World TNCs concentrates on the large number of relatively small companies that have operations abroad in low technology sectors. The argument of this paper is that systematic study of major corporations from the Third World is important for debates about the national bourgeoisie, comprador capitalism and the controversy that currently surrounds the contentious concepts of the developmental state and globalization.     

Geographies and Histories of Unfreedom: Indentured Labourers and Contract Workers in Mauritius

This article contributes to debates on the continuities and divergences of different forms of labour migration over time and the degrees of unfreedom they manifest. It suggests that levels of (un)freedom can usefully be understood by analysing the various forms of control exercised over the movement of labour. More specifically, the article explores how unfreedom can be understood as a particular assemblage of spatial practices that simultaneously compel migration and enforce spatial confinement. With a focus on Mauritius, it is argued here that the coerced or manipulated nature of the transnational movements of indentured and contract migrant labour combined with their subsequent immobility on plantations and in factory compounds shapes the degree of their unfreedom. Additionally, the article extends the historical trajectory of much previous work on unfreedom by exploring the connections between the colonial regime of indentured labour and the contemporary recruitment of contract labour migrants.     

Islamic NGOs and Muslim politics: A case from Jordan

Islamic NGOs have proliferated in an effort to solve basic socioeconomic problems within an Islamic framework. Although legal conditions and government oversight prohibit direct political activities through Islamic NGOs, Islamists utilise these institutions to combat the intrusion of Western values and cultural codes. It is this struggle at the level of discourse and culture that imbues Islamic NGOs with political import, even if these activities are outside the boundaries of traditional politics. This article uses a case study of the al-Afaf Charitable Society in Jordan to examine the relationships among socioeconomic development, political and cultural struggle, and Islam. In an effort to promote early family formation, as encouraged by Islam, al-Afaf provides a variety of services to remove obstacles to marriage. This, in turn, is conceptualised by Islamists as an institutionalised attempt to counter Western values and practices that are seen as inimical to Islam.     

Enforcing labour rights of irregular migrants in Indonesia

The multi-directional nature of labour migration flows has resulted in an increasing number of countries having become both senders and receivers of regular and irregular migrants. However, some countries continue to see themselves primarily as senders and so ignore their role as a receiving country, which can have negative implications for the rights of migrants in their territory. Using the example of Indonesia, which is State Party to the 1990 UN Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families, this article demonstrates that irregular migrant workers in this country have the legal right to protection against labour exploitation even when they work despite the government’s prohibition on employment. The article discusses the ‘right to work’ and how international human rights law has translated it into the ‘right to protection from labour exploitation’ for irregular migrants in Indonesia. By way of two case studies about the Indonesian government’s handling of irregular migrants, it shows how it prioritises enforcement of the employment immigration law over labour and employment laws much like countries that have not ratified the ICRMW. It also draws attention to legal protection gaps that emerge for asylum seekers when they are recognised to be genuine refugees.     

In the Same Boat,but not Equals: The Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Income on Child Labour

This paper examines the impact of parental income on child labour. The empirical literature has found conflicting results regarding whether poverty leads parents to send their children to work. Most of this literature, however, treats child labourers as a single homogeneous group, ignoring differences among working children in work intensity, hazard exposure, and type of employer. This paper argues that accounting for the heterogeneity in child’s working conditions may explain the conflicting results in the literature. Specifically, the existence of this heterogeneity may reflect heterogeneity in parents’ perceptions about the returns to child’s work, and hence in parental reasons to send their children to work. To test this hypothesis, I estimate the effects of parental income on child labour for various working conditions, using data from the 2010 Egypt National Child Labour Survey. This dataset provides rich information on the working conditions of child labourers. The findings show that the effect of parental income on child labour is minimal among children who work in non-hazardous jobs, jobs that are not highly physical, or in family businesses. In contrast, higher parental income does decrease the likelihood of child labour in market work, jobs that are physical and hazardous jobs.     

Ten years after: revisiting the determinants of the adoption of municipal corporations for local service delivery

Research on the use of municipal corporations to deliver local and regional public services has evolved significantly in the past decade. Most of this work addresses the performance of this service-delivery mode in relation to local bureaucracies. However, much less is known about the drivers for the adoption of municipal corporations in the first place. This article reviews the main determinants of adoption – service characteristics, institutional and regulatory settings, political constraints and financial conditions – and highlights the need for comparative research across countries.     

Fairtrade labour certification: the contested incorporation of plantations and workers

Fair trade seeks to promote the well-being and empowerment of farmers and workers in the Global South. This article traces the contested growth and configuration of Fairtrade International labour certification, providing a multifaceted and dynamic view of private regulation. I explain why Fairtrade International began certifying large enterprises and how its hired labour strategy has developed over time, illuminating fair trade’s move from peasant to plantation sectors, stakeholder involvement in shaping the growth of Fairtrade labour certification, the internal and external balancing of farmer and worker concerns, and major innovations in Fairtrade’s ‘New Workers Rights Strategy’. My findings challenge the claim that recent market mainstreaming explains the rise of labour certification within fair trade and the more general argument that private regulatory programmes founded to foster empowerment evolve over time to prioritise a logic of control. As I document, Fairtrade International has recently moved to bolster producer power within its organisation and labour rights within its certification programme. My analysis reveals the dynamic nature of private regulatory programmes and the potentially influential role of diverse stakeholders in shaping the priorities of Fairtrade and other labour-standards systems.     

Dynamics of Unfree Labour in the Contemporary Global Economy

This short introduction to the symposium sets the context for the collection of articles, locating them in debates about labour conditions in the global economy. It outlines the two central questions which animate the symposium. First, what forms do unfree labour take in the contemporary global economy, and what are the implications for the most vulnerable workers in diverse contexts? Second, which processes, conditions and dynamics generate and facilitate unfree labour, and which theoretical and analytical perspectives do we need in order to understand them? It summarises some of responses to these questions which emerge in the collected articles, and highlights their contributions to the task of advancing fresh ways of thinking about unfree labour.