ILPC 2026

This article examines labour control and labour resistance at the bottom of global value chains. Through a class relational approach to development and labour control regime analysis, it examines the labour process at the base of the Senegalese-European horticultural value chain and its relations with rural households. Drawing from primary qualitative and quantitative data collected with women and men in the countryside of Senegal, it analyses power relations within the workplace and households highlighting how labour control bestrides relations of production and reproduction. It argues that labour control beyond workplaces is crucial to supply cheap and disciplined female workers by showing how patriarchy, religion, and paternalism regulate a continuum of class relations between households, fields, and packaging centres. As women subordination is pervasive and multifaceted, forms of resistance within and beyond the labour process emerge. Finally, as women agency and collective action take different forms, and more or less clear manifestations, some ambiguous implication in terms of class struggle is advanced.