Conference Agenda

There is considerable evidence that global value chains (GVCs) occasionally involve the use of forced labor for production. This project aims to build a more comprehensive dataset on the incidence of forced labor in tradable goods and services sectors than is currently available, allowing researchers to explore the connection between globalized production in GVCs and the prevalence of forced labor. Forced labor is defined by the ILO as "all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily” (ILO Forced Labour Convention No. 29, 1930). Freedom from forced labor is a core labor standard in the ILO tradition.

A major challenge in researching forced labor is the lack of comparable data across firms, sectors and countries. This project focuses on forced labor in GVCs, building on the ILO’s dataset and linking it to the numerous case studies that have generated original data. The combined dataset will then be integrated with labor market and production data on GVCs available through the WTO’s Trade in Value Added (TiVa) dataset or the World Input-Output dataset maintained by the University of Groningen.

There is extensive empirical research on how GVCs impact employment and wages, gendered labor market outcomes, workplace safety, labor organizing, economic and social upgrading, monopsony power and corporate social responsibility. However, there has not been an adequate dataset to enable informed claims regarding the incidence of forced labor in GVCs across countries and sectors.

INTRODUCTION

On November 9th, 2025, Brazil’s Labour Inspectors investigated labour rights violations at BYD’s factory construction site after reports of serious human rights abuses. The investigation revealed that over 500 Chinese workers had been fraudulently classified as specialists to bypass local labour registration despite performing regular construction tasks. In unsafe conditions, these workers faced excessive working hours ranging from 60 to 70 hours per week. Their accommodations were overcrowded, lacked mattresses, and had poor sanitation, violating essential health and safety standards. They were subjected to degrading conditions, with limited access to proper meals and rest, constituting a clear breach of Brazilian labour laws. Labour Inspectors determined that these workers had been trafficked into Brazil under false pretenses and were subjected to forced labour, meeting international criteria for human trafficking. As a result, 163 Chinese workers were formally rescued from these exploitative conditions. BYD and its subcontractors were notified that such practices constitute crimes under Brazilian law. Authorities ordered them to terminate the illegal contracts, pay the workers’ outstanding wages and labour rights, and ensure their safe return to China. This case highlights the risks faced by migrant workers in multinational projects and underscores the need for more vigorous enforcement of labour protections and decent work standards.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This study aims to address the following research questions: (1) How do violations of decent work standards contribute to the exploitation of migrant workers in multinational corporations? (2) What are the legal and regulatory challenges to ensuring corporate accountability in the supply chains of multinational companies operating in Brazil?"

METHODOLOGY

This study adopts a case study methodology concerning the labour inspector's findings of slave labour and human trafficking in BYD’s factory in Brazil, using a qualitative research approach centred on data collection methods aligned with the concept of decent work (as defined by the International Labour Organization - ILO). The study will assess how working conditions in this case violated ILO’s Decent Work Agenda, including fair wages, workplace security, social protection, and workers’ rights.

CONTRIBUTION TO LITERATURE AND FINDINGS

By examining the case of BYD’s factory in Brazil, we can understand how violations of decent work standards—including excessive working hours, degrading conditions, and fraudulent recruitment—facilitate human trafficking and forced labour in multinational supply chains. We can also contribute to the discussion over corporate accountability and legal enforcement and the need for stronger protections for migrant workers in global supply chains.

This paper examines security practices in the lower tiers of global supply chains through a study of cotton production and outsourcing in southeast Turkey, a conflict-affected region bordering Syria and home to the Southeastern Anatolia Project, the most ambitious and longest-running development initiative in the Middle East. Specifically, it asks: How do security and development practices shape and reinforce each other in lower tiers of global supply chains, and with what consequences for the security of workers?

My methods comprise participant observation and over 100 interviews with state representatives, NGOs, employers, and workers, conducted during repeated visits between 2021 and 2023. These allow for a detailed analysis of everyday interactions, norms, relationships, and habits within cotton production networks, particularly focusing on how various security practices are enacted from the ground up.

The paper contributes to political economy analyses of labor by developing a framework that integrates insights from critical and feminist security studies. It shifts attention from the security of states and markets to human security, conceptualizing capitalism not only as a social order but also as a biopolitical formation that shapes how life is protected or undermined under specific conditions of community existence.

The findings are twofold. First, the analysis reveals how security and counterinsurgency practices associated with the Southeastern Anatolia Project shape the region’s integration into global cotton supply chains, activating different gendered and racialized identities that supply chain actors must negotiate in their daily lives. Second, outsourcing and related arrangements shift responsibility for worker protection from employers and the state to labor brokers, workers, and their households, deepening material insecurities. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ethical initiatives, designed to protect labor and the environment through ‘brand aid,’ reproduce outsourcing patterns and hierarchies among transnational and local actors. In doing so, these practices promote a neoliberal ideology of self-entrepreneurship, which further erodes human security.

These findings have significant implications for legal frameworks and mechanisms intended to ensure decent work in global supply chains, particularly amid rising security concerns for firms, communities and individuals worldwide. My findings indicate that brand aid often fails to address the violence embedded in supply chains, particularly in conflict-affected regions and among workers at lower tiers. To be effective, legal frameworks must go beyond addressing labor conditions and consider the broader ‘life politics’ of supply chains, taking into account how the security practices of both state and non-state actors can undermine worker protections.

Subcontracting has become a defining feature of the Chilean mining industry's supply chain, with outsourced workers now representing 75% of the total workforce—a stark contrast to approximately one-third in other mining countries. This trend has accelerated over the past two decades, driven by labor market flexibilization and increasing cost-reduction pressures in global extractive industries. In this context, labor standards—often presented by mining companies as a means to improve workers’ conditions—have led to growing disparities between different types of workers. Outsourced workers typically face lower wages, higher job insecurity, and diminished collective bargaining power compared to their directly employed counterparts.

The objective of this article is to analyze how large-scale copper mining companies in Chile employ standardization practices—encompassing rules, routines, and regulations imposed by lead firms on outsourced companies downstream in the supply chain—to control outsourced labor, reduce costs, and mitigate operational disruptions stemming from labor agency.

Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study integrates National Employment Survey analysis, content analysis of companies´ sustainability reports, and two sets of semi-structured interviews. The first set comprises 16 interviews with union leaders and managers from lead and outsourced firms, offering insights into managerial strategies. The second set consists of 35 structured interviews with direct and outsourced mining workers, capturing firsthand experiences of labor conditions and workplace relations.

The findings reveal that standardization functions as an indirect mechanism of labor control through two key strategies. First, lead firms impose stringent performance and compliance standards on subcontractors, utilizing contract-based penalties to reduce unionization and prevent labor disruptions. Second, mining companies symbolically assimilate subcontracted workers with direct employees as “partners” to blur employment distinctions under the umbrella of decent work standards. While these strategies improve certain workplace conditions, such as safety and access to facilities, they have limited the agency of outsourced workers and maintained structural labor inequalities by keeping outsourced workers in precarious and subordinate positions.

This article contributes to the literature on complex supply chains and labor regimes by examining how standardization can serve as a tool for labor control beyond direct employer-employee relationships. It also expands theoretical discussions on labor standards by demonstrating how large firms can finally benefit from regulatory frameworks and decent work standards to navigate tensions between cost reduction, labor conditions, and compliance through managerial strategies that perpetuate employment hierarchies.

This article examines industrial relations and the labour process in Chile’s lithium mining sector, addressing two interrelated levels of analysis to understand labour dynamics in an industry crucial to the global energy transition. At the first level, it explores industrial relations, focusing on how companies, unions, the state, and other actors interact in a context of high demand for labour stability and social control. At the second level, it examines the labour process, emphasizing corporate control mechanisms and how they shape a labour regime adapted to the global demands of lithium, an essential resource for energy storage technologies.

Chile, with its long-standing mining tradition (particularly in copper), has undergone significant transformations in the lithium sector due to the global energy transition as a response to the climate crisis. While this presents a unique economic and developmental opportunity, it has also deepened corporate strategies to prevent labour conflicts through control mechanisms, including the co-optation of union leadership, repression of mobilizations, and union fragmentation. These elements not only affect labour relations but also consolidate a work regime that prioritizes production continuity in an increasingly competitive global market.

At the level of industrial relations, unions in the lithium sector are fragmented and focused on company- or sub-company-specific demands, following a pattern common in Chile that hinders their ability to play a broader national role. Companies efficiently exploit this fragmentation to prevent any conflict that could disrupt production demands. Firms have been particularly effective in keeping so-called “conflictive” unions in check, employing co-optation strategies, such as individualized negotiations with union leaders, and repression mechanisms, including selective dismissals and the judicialization of disputes.

The state plays a limited role. Through the Labour Directorate, it regulates working conditions but faces challenges in monitoring compliance due to geographic, budgetary, and political constraints. Moreover, Chile’s “National Lithium Strategy,” a key policy to position the country as a global leader in lithium production, lacks any focus on labour issues, prioritizing production, commercial, environmental, and indigenous concerns over workers’ rights and conditions.

The lithium labour regime in Chile is characterized by business-driven control mechanisms that ensure production stability, a fragmented union landscape, and a lack of a state-led labour agenda. This configuration results in a highly disciplined work environment where workers’ capacity for resistance is severely constrained, reinforcing the industry’s alignment with the demands of the global lithium economy.