Labor Regimes, Global Production Networks, and State–Society Relations: Assessing the Impact of the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement on Labor in Vietnam

Abstract

Since 2011, the EU has included trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters in its free trade agreements (FTAs), but research questions their effectiveness. The recent EU–Vietnam FTA (EVFTA) appears as an exception, since Vietnam, prior to ratification, committed to groundbreaking labor reforms. This article provides the first analysis of implementation and impacts of the TSD chapter in Vietnam. Building on scholarship applying a multiscalar labor regime framework to the trade–labor linkage, we argue for centering the state, which is pivotal to labor regimes and FTAs (negotiation, implementation, and enforcement) but remains underexplored in extant literature. Employing a strategic-relational approach, we show how the impact of labor provisions is shaped by contestations within, around, and between states, focusing on three sets of interfacing relations: state–society relations in partner countries. interstate relations and geopolitics, and global production network (GPN) relations that structure labor regimes in export sectors. Based on interviews and secondary data, we find that the TSD chapter has been delayed and diluted by conservatives in Vietnam, that EU pressure has made little dent, and that its articulation with GPN dynamics gives rise to mismatches regarding workers’ grievances, buyers’ purchasing practices, and existing modes of resistance. The article’s main contribution is the proposed integration of strategic-relational state theory into a multiscalar labor regime framework for analyzing the impact of labor provisions. Such a perspective yields a less optimistic assessment of the EVFTA and highlights the contradictions of promoting labor standards through FTAs that ultimately serve to expand spaces for capital accumulation.