Rethinking the Labour-Environment (Land) Nexus: Beyond Coloniality, Towards New Epistemologies for Labour Law

Abstract

The existential threat posed by anthropogenic climate change is a powerful indictment of contemporary capitalism. It requires us to directly confront modern capitalism as a civilizing project that renders irrational and obsolete other possibilities of organizing economic and social life. Adopting a decolonial perspective that incorporates theories of racial capitalism, coloniality, and social reproduction, we examine how racial/colonial capitalism articulates the labourenvironment nexus in ways that facilitate or undermine different sorts of livelihoods and socioecologies. We then reflect on how the differentiation and hierarchization that flow from exploitation (labour) and expropriation (labour and land) are reproduced in labour law’s epistemology, evidencing its coloniality. We conclude with a call to embrace epistemic pluralism as crucial to developing labour law that reflects and facilitates heterogeneous livelihoods and ecopolitical justice. Coloniality, Racial Capitalism, Labour and Land, Socio-Ecology, Environment, Social Reproduction, Decolonial Thinking, Dissident Epistemology, Legal Pluralism