CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

This presentation seeks to understand whatdoes the return of small garment sweatshops to large cities in both core andperipheral economies mean for debates on unfree labour and capitalistaccumulation. Having been left at the margins of this industry during Fordism,?local sweatshops? (as opposed to ?international sweatshops? [Montero Bressánand Arcos, 2017] are back since the late 1970s. In these, working conditionsrange from precarious employment to forced labour.Since the crisis of Fordism, sweatshops havebecome crucial for the fashion industry worldwide. While awareness about largesweatshops in export processing zones is broad, little is known about smalllocal sweatshops in large cities both in core and peripheral economies,employing migrant labour and supplying cheap garment to fast-fashion brandedretailers. If fear to delocalisation leads to low workers organisation in coreeconomies, the threat of cheap imported garments affecting local jobs iscrucial for disciplining the labour force in peripheral economies. The ?import?of cheap labour into sweatshops located at arms-length distance from the storeswraps up a context in which formal workers are little more than a rarity, and arethe worst paid of all industrial workers in several countries. Through an analysis of the changes in the productionand commercialisation of fashion clothing since the late 1970s, thispresentations shows how the flourishing of forced labour during recent decadesalong the success of well-known branded manufacturers and retailers, suggeststhat, far from being a pre-capitalist reminiscence, unfree labour is not onlycompatible with capitalist accumulation, but it can also be critical for itssurvival. The findings are based on over 11 years of research on localsweatshops in Prato (Italy) and mostly in Buenos Aires, as well as on a broadknowledge of secondary sources about other cases around the world.

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