ILPC 2026

Time is often a neglected aspect in studies of industrial development and work, often dominated by linear, modernising narratives celebrating the ‘liberating nature’ of industrial work vis-à-vis other (informal) activities. Aimed at debunking these narratives, this article explores time as a crucial category of analysis shaping the dynamics of exploitation. First, it develops a political economy of time building on Marxian thought and feminist insights on social reproduction, to discuss the productive and reproductive temporalities of exploitation. Secondly, it analyses how these temporalities shape distinct forms of labour circulation characterising contemporary industrial work. Thirdly, the article illustrates these theoretical points in practice, by drawing on evidence from India’s ‘sweatshop regime’. It develops an analysis of forms of labour circulation across the sweatshop regime, and it illustrates their link to distinct temporalities of production and reproduction and their gendered features. Finally, through an analysis of twenty life histories of former women factory workers, the article stresses how garment work is merely a temporary moment in the life of the working poor. Post-work dynamics reveal that women re-enter informal occupations; leave industrial work with no savings and with high debt, and experience less time-pressures outside the factory. A time-based analysis of industrial work in global labour-intensive industries like garment suggests the presence of a revolving door between industrial and informal work in the lives of the working poor, while also disproving notions of industrial work as ‘better’ work in developing settings.