Mutual dependency: Offshored labour and family organisation in post-socialist Romania

Abstract

By applying the social reproduction theory, this study proposes a critical conceptualization of the relations between the worker family and offshoring labour in transiting economies. The theoretical foundation of this article underscores that a thorough study of offshoring requires an examination not only of the workplace, worker and employment relations but also of the familial relations within the workers’ households. Based on interviews with workers and their family members, which I conducted in the host community of a consumer electronics facility in Romanian Transylvania, in this article I show how familial support helps to manage limitations that result from the precarious nature of offshoring labour and the transitional realities of the destination countries and how it ultimately serves as a means of achieving greater inter-generational emancipation. The study of familial relations in offshoring’s destination countries provides a better understanding of global labour relations and the way offshoring labour is reproduced in transiting countries. It also shows how the global capitalist system causes tensions with the processes of social reproduction in low-welfare economies, which usually host offshoring investments.