Documents Cambridge University Press 186 results

"The campaign to address severe forms of labour market exploitation in markets around the world has led activists, unionists, policymakers, and legislators to explore the role of corporations in driving human trafficking and modern slavery (LeBaron, 2020). Based on the understanding that lead firms are not merely complicit actors but active contributors – through their purchasing and sourcing practices – to violations of workers' human rights and labour standards, the focus on corporations seeks to expand corporate responsibility to working conditions throughout global value chains (GVCs) (Anner, 2015). In this chapter, we compare two labour governance models that have developed in the quest to combat modern slavery.
To better comprehend the structural aspects of efforts to eradicate modern slavery within GVCs and the dynamics created around them, as well as the measures pursued and their implications, we further develop and employ our analytical concept of ‘anti-trafficking chains'. This term refers to the provision of anti-trafficking services by both non-profit and for-profit entities to multinational corporations (MNCs), mirroring the logic and structure of supply chains (Barkay et al., 2024). The comparative analysis presented here focuses on two types of anti-trafficking chains: one that has proliferated following the enactment of State Anti-Trafficking laws in various countries and another that emerged from the deployment of the Worker Social Responsibility (WSR) model. This analysis seeks to discern the extent to which State Anti-Trafficking laws provide the expected hardening of soft-law anti-trafficking tools and to identify the conditions under which anti-trafficking chains may transform corporate behaviour and serve as drivers of change in human trafficking in GVCs. To this end, this chapter offers a structural analysis of the governance models behind State Anti-Trafficking laws and WSR and of the power dynamics created by each."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Modern Slavery and the Governance of Global Value Chains provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the links between Global Value Chains (GVCs) governance, regulation, and vulnerability to severe forms of labour market exploitation by focusing on governance initiatives that seek to induce corporate action to end or mitigate modern slavery. The book brings together chapters by scholars from developed, developing, and emerging economies and from various disciplines to explore the complex relationship between global and local patterns of production and consumption, and severe forms of labour market exploitation. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core."

This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses

"The Law of Global Value Chains
Global value chain (GVC) analysis captures how firms become the dominant organizational form in the coordination of global social relations of production (Baglioni et al., 2017: 315), breaking with state-centric approaches to understanding economic development. Changing patterns of global production and the prevalence of outsourcing mean that industrial capacity is owned by producers in developing countries but controlled to a significant extent by lead firms located in developed economies (Gereffi, 2018: 255). From this starting point, GVC analysis focuses on how global lead firms ‘drive' the actions of other firms in the chain (Gereffi et al., 2005; Gibbon et al., 2008). These dynamics of ‘drivenness' are undergirded by a legal infrastructure, which plays a crucial role for the governance and coordination of the chain and for the generation and distribution of economic value (The IGLP Law and Global Production Working Group, 2016; Danielsen, 2005). A key part of this legal infrastructure are mechanisms of contractual governance, which both ensure control over value chains and formalize power asymmetries among the different actors. For instance, suppliers might be pushed to assume disproportionate financial risk, while lead firms can disengage from their contractual relationships at their discretion (Anner, 2020; Hering, 2021). Yet implicit in the capacity of lead firms to control and drive the chain through mechanisms of contractual governance is also their potential to act as regulators of the production process, possibly guaranteeing labour, social, and environmental standards by pressuring suppliers. Lead firms export legal frameworks that eventually shape the law on the ground, functioning as proxies of legal homogenization and isolating economic activities from the contingent exercise of national public authority (Ferrando, 2014). This opens a door for a possible re-internalization of ‘externalities' of production – of aspects of the production process that have nothing to do with product quality standards, such as labour rights and environmental standards. In other words, while the fragmentation of global production initially enables divorcing value accumulation from liability for wrongdoing, the ‘drivenness' of value chains by lead firms entails at least the theoretical possibility that such firms assume broader forms of regulatory capacity with regard to distanced stakeholders – workers along the supply chains and various local communities."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"What Trajectory for the Regulation of Transnational Corporate Responsibility?
The framework for transnational corporate responsibility along global value chains (GVCs) is in flux. While the legal mechanisms have generally become tighter in recent years, the development follows no uniform trajectory. With scattered, disparate, and overlapping initiatives and regulatory regimes currently coexisting, it seems an open political question which regulatory paradigm will prevail in the medium and longer term. This chapter zooms in on specific transitional moments in the regulatory evolution of corporate responsibility. The dominant narrative portrays this evolution as roughly two decades of linear progress from ‘voluntary' (deemed ‘ineffective') corporate social responsibility to ‘mandatory' (and hence deemed more ‘effective') instruments, with each stage reacting to deficits of the previous one by imposing tighter standards, leaving fewer gaps, and allowing stricter enforcement. While this sequential understanding of corporate responsibility with each stage implementing selective improvements indeed captures an important dynamic within corporate responsibility, it paints an incomplete picture. First, it stresses rupture over continuity and thereby distracts attention from shared and structural deficits of the regulation of corporate responsibility across its different ‘stages'. Second, it assumes regulatory discourses of corporate responsibility to be largely self-referential and isolated from broader regulatory developments in other fields. These two limitations have deflected the debate from exposing certain structural difficulties in regulating complex value chains, as well as the deeper political dynamics at play in framing regulatory ‘innovations'.
Against this background, this chapter examines the example of reporting regulation as deployed to address different dimensions of corporate responsibility, including modern slavery. Among the substantive goals on the agenda of corporate responsibility, curbing modern slavery is arguably the most intricate. Intrinsically linked to and sustained by the business model of offshore capitalism, modern slavery forms a ‘viable management practice for many enterprises' (Crane, 2013: 49)."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Despite international instruments on trafficking and forced labour that stipulate the importance of ensuring rightsholders can access effective remedy, instances of remediation for harms including forced, bonded, and child labour, as well as trafficking, have been rare. While remedy is also a common feature of strategies to address modern slavery adopted by nation states and multinational businesses, in practice workers who have been subject to severe forms of labour exploitation in global value chains (GVCs) continue to face significant obstacles to securing redress from those who have violated, or contributed to violation, of their rights.
Obstacles to remedy are multifarious and well-documented (OHCHR, 2016; ICAR et al., 2013). GVCs are complex, involving multiple actors and crossing multiple jurisdictions, rendering it challenging to assign accountability and secure appropriate remedial measures, and most legal systems have not adapted to the reality of service and production within GVCs. Even where powerful (‘lead') companies in the value chain shape the terms of supply and working conditions and are in the same jurisdiction in which the harm arising from their actions or omissions has occurred, remedial action is often stymied by labour law systems that only allow claims against direct employers. Where claims of joint employment or accessorial liability are possible under labour law, such claims are infrequent because of the stringency of tests of control or contribution, and the costs of such litigation (Marshall et al., 2023). In rare cases where litigants are successful in their legal claims, they often struggle to secure enforcement of any court order. Where the lead company that is influencing working conditions in the value chain is in another jurisdiction to where the harm has occurred, the chances of such claims succeeding are even lower (Fudge and Mundlak, 2023). Key principles underpinning private international law – such as those pertaining to jurisdiction and choice of law – largely operate to the benefit of businesses rather than those affected by their activities."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"The question of how trade governance is – and should be – linked to labour standards has long been debated among academics, policymakers, and activists (Servais, 1989; McCrudden and Davies, 2000; Barry and Reddy, 2006). Especially the insertion of labour-related requirements into the relevant trade instruments as a means to improve workers' rights in the global economy has been the subject of controversy (Alston, 1993; Bhagwati, 1995; Tsogas, 1999). While largely absent from the multilateral trading framework, such requirements have been included in numerous bilateral and regional trade agreements (ILO, 2013, 2016, 2019a; Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023b) as well as unilateral trade instruments, such as trade preference schemes and import ban legislation (Tsogas, 2000; Addo, 2015; Velluti, 2020). Forced labour, a form of modern slavery, has been a key issue addressed by these instruments (Compa, 1993; Ehrenberg, 1995; Plouffe-Malette and Bisson, 2019) and, until recently, together with prison labour the only labour-related subject matter for which dedicated import ban legislation has been enacted (Bade, 2000; Fanou, 2023; Lopez and Alghazali, 2023).
This raises the question of which implications such forced labour-related clauses in trade instruments entail for addressing forced labour issues in contexts related to global value chains (GVCs). With trade in GVCs constituting 70 per cent of overall trade in 2020 (OECD, 2020), the regulation of trade can have important implications for GVC governance (Corley-Coulibaly et al., 2023). Trade instruments typically involve policy levers, including economic incentives and disincentives, that can impact actors involved in GVC governance, such as states, companies, and civil society actors (Aissi et al., 2018). However, little is known about the extent to which, and the conditions under which, they have contributed to tackling forced labour in GVCs in an effective manner, that is, in a way that tackles the underlying causes of forced labour and has enduring impact."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"Global value chains (GVCs) are a manifestation of the contemporary global political economy. Viewing them solely as economic constructs, however, obscures the role that law and the wider regulatory environment play in their development and facilitation. The issue of modern slavery within GVCs has been the subject of careful scrutiny from a variety of legal sub-disciplines, including labour, welfare, and immigration law. In this chapter, I examine the role of company law, and particularly the fiduciary duty of directors to act in the interests of the company, in creating conditions under which modern slavery flourishes in GVCs. I suggest that the ideology of shareholder primacy that helps shape board decision-making is flawed both normatively and as a matter of legal doctrine. The central argument advanced is that shareholders' interests are typically treated as a proxy for a company's interests due to the ambiguity in defining what it means to act in the interests of the company as a legal construct. Yet this focus on prioritizing the interests of shareholders can motivate lead companies' directors to make decisions that deliver investor returns at the expense of fundamental labour rights and human dignity. The chapter concludes by exploring the potential of incorporating principles of proportionality into board decision-making. It is suggested that this approach can enhance directors' knowledge and awareness of balancing competing interests, thereby avoiding the most egregious abuses of corporate power in the pursuit of profit."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"For over a decade, scholars have documented forced labour among low-wage migrant workers in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia (Blaydes, 2023; Fernando and Lodermeier, 2022; Iskander, 2021; Parreñas, 2021). A broad understanding within this literature is that among the root causes of this phenomenon in the GCC are abuses perpetrated during workers' recruitment from their home countries, such as extortionate fees, misinformation, and coercion. Recruitment is conducted by intermediary firms in workers' home countries, known as ‘recruiters' or ‘recruitment firms'. Eighty per cent of low-wage migrant workers in the GCC migrate through these channels (Mendoza, 2012).
Yet, despite the proliferation of this method, the scholarship on forced labour in the GCC contains few studies on recruitment and even fewer that include interviews with the recruiters themselves (Gardner, 2012; Kern and Müller-Böker, 2015). This gap in the literature is particularly notable since scholars of forced labour have renewed their focus on recruitment as a driver of forced labour of migrant workers globally (Crane et al., 2021; Crane and LeBaron, 2018), including as a structural feature of contemporary global capitalism (Crane and LeBaron, 2018; Mantouvalou, 2023; Shamir, 2012) and with colonial origins (Buckley et al., 2023; Iskander, 2021; Wright, 2021). Within this scholarship, a growing number of studies suggest that the recruitment of low-wage migrant workers should be understood as a ‘human supply chain', a concept developed by Jennifer Gordon as an analogy to product global value chains (GVCs) (Gordon, 2017; Buckley et al., 2023; Farbenblum and Nolan, 2020; LeBaron, 2020; Pittman, 2018; Hernández-León, 2021; Milkman, 2020).
According to this framing, employers are seen as lead firms at the top of the human supply chain, mirroring the portrayal of lead firms at the top of product supply chains within the GVC literature (Gordon, 2017). Empirical studies have shown that many product supply chains are, in fact, lead firm- or buyer-driven – meaning that the lead firm holds the greatest bargaining power, as well as the greatest ability to influence the terms of its contracts with suppliers (Gereffi, 2018)."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"As many have warned, the expansionism or ‘exploitation creep' (Chuang, 2014) that characterizes discourses around ‘modern slavery' has only succeeded in clouding the issue, both legally and politically, rather than rendering it more visible (see also Miers, 2003; O'Connell-Davidson, 2015; Quirk, 2018). As Chuang (2014: 611) explains, this ‘exploitation creep' has entailed the consideration of an ever-broadening range of practices as falling under the ‘modern slavery' umbrella term. Chuang centres her attention on two related paradigmatic shifts that have allowed this to happen: the reframing of all forced labour as trafficking and the labelling of trafficking as, by definition, slavery (2014: 611). ‘Modern slavery' has therefore become a catch-all and highly malleable term, which can include practices as disparate as selling sexual services online, generational bonded labour in India, low-level drug distribution in the UK, and forced marriage.
This ‘exploitation creep' has produced two broad policy responses. On the one hand, we have seen the emergence of a hegemonic position referred to in the literature as ‘modern slavery abolitionism' (Chuang, 2014; O'Connell-Davidson, 2015). This locates the source of these ostensibly exploitative labour practices in deviant/criminal entities (organized crime groups and/or rogue multinational corporations). Under the abolitionism paradigm, preventative policies have included the banning or restriction of migration for ‘vulnerable' populations, often women from the Global South (Kempadoo and Doezema, 1998; Doezema, 2002; Kapur, 2005; Andrijasevic, 2007; Agustín, 2007); the ‘rescue, protection and rehabilitation' of individual victims identified in contexts of destination; and the prosecution of perpetrators. Abolitionism invests in moral crusades along an axis of evil, presenting ‘modern slavery' as an exceptional problem to be driven-out (Bunting and Quirk, 2014) and characterized by methodological individualism (LeBaron and Ayers, 2013: 874). Conceptualizing ‘modern slavery' as the result of evil criminals or rogue companies, abolitionist policies thus invisibilize the very conditions in which such exploitative and unfree relations thrive. This unnuanced, ‘one-size-fits-all' approach fails to consider historically determined systems and relations of power that underpin exploitative and unfree labour."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).