ILPC 2027

Many studies of the link between economic inequality and poverty point to participation in globalisation as a remedy to poverty (Phillips, 2011; Hickey, 2007; Du Toit, 2004; Hickey, 2013). Participating in globalisation may be achieved by taking up employment in a globalised field of production. In order to take up employment in a globalised field of production, workers may use the services provided by labour market intermediaries (LMIs). As such LMIs may be facilitators of both migration and development (Agunias, 2009). Globalised fields of production are characterised by production supply chains operating across borders. Production supply chains, in turn, can be characterised as a system of organisations, people, activities, information, and resources involved in moving a product or service from the supplier to the customer. Significantly, however, global production supply chains have also been linked by a number of scholars to processes of employment degradation and – particularly importantly, for my purposes – of forced labour (James et al., 2015; Locke et al., 2009; Andeers and Vuong, 2011; Posthuma and Nathan, 2010). The literature on global production supply chains suggests that one way to eradicate forced labour and fraudulent recruitment practices is implementing laws on chain liability (Anner et al, 2013; Gordon, 2015).

This paper argues that focusing on fraudulent recruitment practices resulting in forced labour in global production supply chains exclusively from a criminological point of view – that is to say by prioritising the prosecution of fraudulent LMIs that supplied workers into condition of forced labour – happens at the expense of exploring forced labour as a structural economic problem. Moreover, focusing on forced labour as a result of human trafficking disregards the role the governance of both value and product supply chains may play in forced labour. Besides the differences between product and human supply chains are ignored, and these differences are crucial in order to understand the various facets of forced labour. In the first part this paper explains how product supply chain - that also may be value chains defined as “the full range of activities that are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the intermediary phases of production and delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use” (Kaplinsky, 2004) – are governed and what these governance types tell us about forced labour. In addition, the link between product and human supply chains is explored. The second part of this paper investigates the shortcoming of seeing forced labour in global production supply chains as a result of inter-firm relationships. In order to remedy this shortcoming, the theory of global production networks is introduced to identify actors located outside traditional inter-firm relationships that play a significant role in addressing forced labour. The final part of this paper explains how conditions of forced labour may be rendered durable and institutionalized.

This paper draws on data gained from over 50 interviews carried out as part of my PhD field work between June 2016 and September 2016. My doctoral research investigates how Romanian labour migrants have been supplied into conditions of forced labour by LMIs in UK horticulture. Within the scope of my thesis Global Production Network (GPN) analysis will be used to explore whether the phenomenon of international labour outsourcing by LMIs within global value chains (GVCs) leads to forced labour. The data generated from these interviews will be analysed between October 2016 and January 2017 by means of retroductive strategy (Saether, 1998). Combining retroductive strategy with a case study approach is useful in so far that cases may be used to discern causation based on relations between actors and agencies (Thomas, 1998, p. 308).