“We work in the light but get paid in the dark”: Structural violence and Haitian labor in Dominican sugarcane production

Agriculture, food and global value chains: issues, methods and challenges

Learning From the Past and Working in the Present to Create an Antiracist Future for Academic Medicine.

Historical Forgetting and the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal Amelia Hintzen On September 23, 2013, the Constitutional Tribunal of the Dominican Republic ruled on the case of Juliana Dequis Pierre. Pierre was born in 1984 to Haitian migrants, and in 2008, when she attempted to acquire her national identity card, government officials confiscated her birth certificate and informed her that they could not issue her any documents because her last names were Haitian. After a lower court rejected Pierre’s appeal for the return of her birth certificate, the case eventually reached the Constitutional Tribunal, which ruled that Pierre was not a Dominican citizen because her parents were not in the country legally. In addition, the judges gave the electoral commission one year to compile a list of people like Pierre to be excluded from citizenship. The ruling applies to anyone born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian migrant workers after 1929 and could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of Dominicans. The court’s decision is part of a larger government campaign that over the past decade has made it progressively more difficult for Dominicans of Haitian descent to obtain documentation. As many domestic and international critics have pointed out, these actions violate the human rights of many Haitians and people of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic. Furthermore, this ruling is unprecedented because it attempts to impose limits on citizenship retroactively. The Tribunal’s decision is a work of dangerous historical revisionism that has no foundation in Dominican legal history and is in violation of the Dominican Constitution. In its decision, the Constitutional Tribunal acknowledges that Article 8 of the 1929 Constitution established the right of jus soli nationality, or the right of anyone born in Dominican territory to citizenship. However, it emphasizes that the 1929 Constitution, and those since, excluded children born to “diplomats and those in transit.” The judges argue that a 1939 immigration law, which designates temporary laborers and their families as “non-immigrants,” proves that Haitian workers who entered the country to work on sugar plantations and their family members are considered [End Page 108] “in transit” and that, on this basis, their children do not qualify for jus soli citizenship. The 1939 law distinguished between “immigrant” and “non-immigrant” by explaining that “foreigners admitted as immigrants can reside indefinitely in the Republic [and] those non-immigrants will only be granted temporary admission.”1 The Constitutional Tribunal’s argument hinges on the claim that “temporary admission” is synonymous with “in transit.” Therefore, it concludes, children born to Haitian seasonal workers after 1929 are not considered Dominican citizens and should instead apply for Haitian citizenship. This argument is specious for several reasons. There is no evidence that the framers of the 1929 constitution intended the phrase “in transit” found in Article 8 to apply to migrant sugar laborers. Nor did the Dominican government attempt to employ the article in this way during most of the twentieth century. Despite widespread racism against and abuse of Haitians and their children, government officials have been forced, often begrudgingly, to recognize Haitian Dominicans as citizens and grant them rights as such. In 1967 the Director of Migration wrote to the Secretary of the Armed Forces about a recent detention and planned repatriation of two hundred Haitians. He reminded the secretary that he needed to be careful not to “dismiss the possibility that Haitian nationals qualify to obtain permanent residence in the country for either their activities or for . . . having children born in the country.”2 As we can see from this letter, in 1967 not only were children of Haitians considered citizens, but also those migrants who had children in the country were eligible for permanent residence and had protection against deportation as well. Two years later the Deputy Secretary of Migration wrote to then-President Joaquín Balaguer to complain that “on multiple occasions this department is going to repatriate [a] Haitian who has violated the law of migration but . . . their wife or concubine comes with the children and, in light of this, we are required to revoke the deportation order and order the release of the Haitian.” In the same letter the Deputy Secretary also expressed his worries about...

How the adoption of industry 4.0 technologies is related to participation in global and domestic value chains: Evidence from Russia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the global value chain (GVC) participation and the associated improvements in labour productivity and employment among 16 Asia-Pacific countries.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the indicators of GVC participation are computed using annual multi-region input-output tables over the period 1990-2014. Second, the study examines the long-run association between GVCs and labour productivity through Pedroni (2004) and Westerlund (2007) panel cointegration techniques. Then in the third step, the long-run elasticities are estimated using dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fixed-random effects models. Finally, the direction of causality is examined using the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) panel causality technique.FindingsThe result shows an increasing participation of GVCs among Asia-Pacific countries. The findings also show the long-run relationship between GVCs and labour productivity. The long-run elasticities suggest the positive association of GVCs with labour productivity and employment. Further, the categorization of Asia-Pacific countries based on income groups reveals that improvement in labour productivity and employment outcomes is significantly greater in the case of middle-income countries. Finally, the results from panel causality infer that the direction of causality runs from GVCs to labour productivity and GVCs to employment.Practical implicationsThe findings enable policymakers to formulate appropriate policies in Asia-Pacific countries to keep the momentum of increasing their participation in GVC for boosting labour productivity and employment gains.Originality/valueTo the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study examining the spillover effects of GVC on labour productivity and employment in case of Asia-Pacific countries.

This chapter deals with labour conditions and discrimination of migrant workers in Italy, with a particular focus on the agricultural sector in two Southern Italian areas: Northern Basilicata and Western Sicily. The first part of the chapter describes the history of migration to Italy and the most relevant transformations occurred over the last years, as well as an overview of the relevant legislation on migration and racial discrimination at work. The second part, on the basis of two ethnographic studies realized by the two authors, analyses the complex intertwinement of structural and symbolic violence in determining the conditions of exploitation and discrimination of migrant seasonal labourers in the two areas. The study focuses on three topics: piecework payment; the ghettoization and segregation of seasonal labourers; the system of informal and illegal labour intermediation called caporalato. It is argued that that the main source of symbolic violence is represented by the brokers called caporali, who are usually of the same nationality of the labourers. If, on a certain extent, migrant workers perceive their ghettoization, discrimination and exploitation as ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’, this is due to the communitarian relationships built and manipulated by the caporali. On the contrary, the State and the local administrations seem to act exclusively as a source of structural violence. The national legislation on migration, as well as the lack of public policies concerning labour intermediation, transport and accommodation for seasonal labourers, appears as the main reason of the vulnerability of migrant workers in the considered areas.

Tourism is not merely a capitalist practice but a central practice through which capitalism sustains itself. Precisely how tourism “products” become capital and the types of violence this process entails, however, has not yet been systematically theorized or investigated. Building on Noel Castree's six principles of commodification, we explore how tourism becomes capital, understood as “value in motion”, and how this process not only provokes various forms of material violence but can become a form of (structural) violence in its own right. Based on research in tourism settings in Southern Africa and Latin America and general trends in international tourism, we argue that three integrated forms of structural violence to both humans and non-human natures are especially prominent, namely the systematic production of inequalities, waste and “spaces of exception”. As a global industry crucially dependent on integrated material and discursive forms of value creation, we also show that these forms of structural violence are often rendered invisible through branding. We conclude that tourism uniquely combines these three forms of structural violence to enable a move from Schumpeter's famous creative destruction to “destructive creation” as a key form of violence under capitalism.

MotivationThe COVID‐19 pandemic has massively disrupted international trade and global value chains. Impacts, however, differ across regions and industries. This article contributes to a better understanding of the scale of disruptions to industries and value chains integral to the economies of and livelihoods in developing countries, and what role policy can play to mitigate harm.PurposeThis article aims to: (1) analyse and characterize disruptions to the global apparel value chain caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on how developing countries have been impacted, and; (2) identify key policies to support a resilient, inclusive and sustainable recovery.Approach and methodsWe review COVID‐19 related reports published by international and non‐governmental organizations, international trade and production statistics, industry surveys and media reports. We frame our analysis predominantly within the Global Value Chains literature.FindingsThe global apparel value chain has been severely disrupted by the pandemic, owing to direct effects of sickness on workers in factories, reduced output of materials—cloth, thread, etc.—used to fabricate clothing, and to reduced demand for apparel in high‐income countries. Developing countries are suffering disproportionately in terms of profits, wages, job security and job safety. Women workers in the apparel chain have been hit especially hard, not only because most workers in the chain are women, but also because they have experienced increasing unpaid care work and higher risk of gender‐based violence.Policy implicationsFive key areas of policy to support a resilient, inclusive and sustainable recovery stand out: (1) delivering emergency responses to ensure firm survival and the protection of workers’ livelihoods; (2) reformulating FDI attraction strategies and promoting market diversification; (3) supporting technology adoption and skills development; (4) deploying labour standards to improve workers’ conditions and strengthening social protection systems; and (5) adopting gender‐sensitive responses.

The article investigates international trade activity of Ukraine for the period 2018-2020. Ukrainian companies tend to be providing integration into global value chains. The research confirms positive dynamics in foreign trade of Ukraine for the period 2018-2020. The Ukrainian enterprises mainly exports low value-added goods and imports high value-added goods. Development of Ukraine's economy requires successful integration into global production and distribution networks with a reduction in the processing of raw materials with insignificant added value. The research confirms positive dynamics in foreign trade of Ukraine for the period 2018-2020. The research methods used in the study are as follows: analysis and study of literature, scientific description, Internet research, statistical and structural survey, data sheet presentation. The research proved that the economic relations between Ukraine and trade partners demonstrate significant increase of the foreign trade within the global value chains (GVC). Ukrainian companies tend to be providing integration into global value chains. Agricultural and industrial products exported from Ukraine accounted for 42.1% of the total international sales in 2020. Recommendations for Ukraine's integration into global and regional business services can include developing services in context of GVC, developing international cooperation between enterprises on global business platforms. The basis for successful integration into GVC must be the development of innovative ecosystems of industrial high technologies. It is important to develop innovative industrial high-tech ecosystems for successful integration into GVC. Ukrainian exports are dominated by metallurgical and agricultural products. Its feature is the high proportion of intermediate goods used as a source material for the production of other final consumer goods. The author tries to formulate modern directions of development for further integration of the Ukrainian economy into global and regional value chains. Recommendations for Ukraine's integration into global and regional business services can include developing services, developing international cooperation between enterprises on global business platforms.

Low productivity and quality of employment have always been a big problem in Indonesia, caused by the lack and mismatch of skills in the workforce. Labor productivity (LP) describes the company’s ability to produce something. This can be determined by added value or output. Several factors influence LP, such as education, age, and training. The concept of global value chains (GVCs) has become an integral part of economic activity, and trade within global production networks has grown more rapidly than conventional trade in final goods. GVCs have both positive and negative impacts on employment opportunities. The automotive industry is categorised as one of the ten primary priority industries in the Indonesian manufacturing sector. This research analyses the impact of LP on GVC integration in the Indonesian automotive industry. The data used in this research comes from the World Input–Output Database (WIOD) and the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) from 1995 to 2014. The variables used include the number of workers, added value, real wages, and GVC, which were calculated by the author using the Inter-Country Input–Output (ICIO) approach. Using ICIO analysis, the following matrix should be constructed to determine involvement in GVCs. This research shows that LP in the Indonesian automotive industry has a positive trend, and the GVC position in the Indonesian automotive industry has a positive trend line. The domestic value chain increased from 4% to 33%. This improves the ability to produce higher value-added and intermediate export goods. LP increases the domestic value chain in the Indonesian automotive industry, leading to global value chain integration. Thus, LP goes hand in hand with integrating GVCs.

Entering 2020, the Covid-19 epidemic struck the lives of all people across borders of nation-states mercilessly and this triggered a global economic recession. Pandemic brought various unforeseen crises, including for Creative Industry workers. Although the last two decades show a positive trend of Creative Industry’s financial contribution for Indonesia's GDP, but, long before the outbreak of the Pandemic, the seeds of the crisis of the Creative Industries have been around for a long time, starting from the transition phase of the era of Industrial Capitalism to Digital Capitalism. Using the approach of the Analysis of Political Economy of the Media, the author will show the genealogy of the crisis by outlining the conceptual dimension of 'structural violence' refering to the Structural Theory of Galtung's Cultural Imperialism (1971). A brief history of the term Digital Capitalism is also discussed in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the crisis. Furthermore, a number of political economy issues that emerged in Digital Capitalism were identified to indicate the locus problematicus of the ongoing crisis. The core argument of this paper will show why the problems of political economy concerning the dualism of Data as Capital and Data as Labor are serious problems in Digital Capitalism, which escapes the attention of the public. The Author offers solution by combining a more equitable pro-Structural input from Galtung analysis, Marxist perspectives, and the collective pro-agency approach from Arrieta-Ibarra, et al. (2018). Analysis of the problem of commodification of Digital Media Workers in the framework of Data as Labor is expected to increase the reader's awareness that the relationship of inequality and exploitation of workers in the era of Industrial Capitalism actually continues in Digital Capitalism when Big Data becomes the logic of new capital accumulation (within the framework of Data as Capital) with The Big Five Internet Corporations as the responsible actors. When Covid-19 hit, material conditions and the survival of creative industry workers as free labor were made even worse.

Automotive industry is one of the pillar industries for our country. As the world's third largest car manufacturer behind U.S. and Japan, China is narrowing the gap with first echelon with an annual growth of over 20 percent. But it should not be ignored that our automotive industry is still at an infant stage. Based on the theory of global value chain and industrial upgrading, this paper analyzed the parts of global automotive industry value chain and put forward some suggestions for our country's automotive industrial upgrading. Chinese auto manufacturers should seek suitable niche in global automotive value chain to develop and upgrade, and move towards more profitable, more capital- and skill-intensive section along the global automotive value chain step by step.

Over the past decades, there has been a megatrend regarding the international diffusion of value chain activities, such as sourcing, design, production, distribution and marketing. This leads to a notion of global value chains (GVCs), in which all the value chain activities are distributed globally. GVCs have altered the nature of specialisation and production in many sectors regarding the selection of best practices and producers; reduction of costs; availability of raw materials; and improvement in quality, of both input and output, across the global chain. Although such huge benefits and opportunities can be achieved, the associated risks are also increased due to the complexity and involvement of too many entities in the GVC network. This, especially, matters in food and agricultural value chains, which are facing a number of challenges, such as high trade barriers, strict government regulations, changing climate conditions, and fluctuations in supply and demand, as well as high risks associated with food security and safety. Underpinning this megatrend and its associated risks, managing global food value chain risks using advanced technologies is becoming important for GVC transformation. Considered as one of the most disruptive technologies of recent times, the impact of blockchain ought to be crucial to managing risks in the global food value chain. In order to make full use of blockchain, the technology is usually integrated with other innovative and emerging technologies, such as the internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics. This combination is driving a revolution in which firms are strengthening their GVCs through mitigating risks, consequently creating the safety and complete integrity of the value chains. This study is, therefore, among the few to identify the potential risks associated with GVCs and explore the significant roles of blockchain and its allied technologies in mitigating the identified global food value chain risks.

The rapid expansion of agrifood exports from low‐ and middle‐income countries and the contribution of global value chains to rural development are well‐documented in the literature. Also, studies on modernization of domestic food value chains in these countries are emerging. Yet, the linkages between global and local value chains are rarely studied. On the one hand, the development and expansion of global value chains may create competition with local value chains for land, labor, water, soil nutrients, and other resources. On the other hand, positive spillover effects, such as investment, technical or institutional spillovers, may occur and spur the development of local value chains. In this article, we put forward a conceptual discussion on the type of linkages between global and local value chains, and how these depend on crop and value chain characteristics. We review the empirical evidence on these linkages. Our focus is on Africa, where agrifood exports and global value chains evolved rapidly and where challenges remain to upgrade and increase efficiency in local food value chains.

Topicality. Modern trends in the formation of institutional support for logistics chains of commodity markets, led to the urgent need to consider them on the example of the food market. The integration of domestic agricultural enterprises into value chains is fundamentally important for the development of Ukraine's agricultural industry. Participation in such logistics chains provides a synergistic effect that allows participants, stakeholders to join forces to achieve their goals and objectives and generally improves competitiveness in food markets, including foreign ones. Possibility of control of a logistic chain of creation of the added value and rich positive experience of development of integration allows to activate available commodity potential objects and objects. Economic policy and the interest of stakeholders in logistics product chains, which is why it is formed and implemented through the prism of institutional support in the external dimension.Аim and tasks. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the theoretical and methodological provisions and to develop practical recommendations for the formation of logistics chains to add value to the provision of foreign commodity markets in their markets.Research results. Analysis of the problems of efficiency of global agri-food value chains and a specific market participant, allows you to study agricultural enterprises in this chain and the links between them to see how and when they can be strengthened to achieve production and marketing efficiency; or to facilitate a more efficient vertical and horizontal flow of information, production factors and resources. Such an analysis may reveal efficiency constraints related to a specific feature of global agri-food value chains in commodity markets. Both developed and developing countries must be able to take advantage of global food value chains. Recent data show that as countries participate in global value chains of commodity markets, the growth rate of their gross domestic product increases. Value chains play an important role as a source of job creation. Thus, trade and supply in food hubs within the logistics chains of food markets stimulates the development of logistics as a critical component of global chains, as it is extremely important to supply products in the right quantity, the right quality, on time. The study also focuses on general market factors that affect the efficiency of specific value chains in the external dimension: legislative, regulatory and political environment; availability and quality of support services such as funding, training and information technology.Conclusions. Thus, the formation of efficient logistics chains allows to strengthen ties, cooperation between agricultural enterprises and multinational corporations through a transparent regulatory and investment environment in Ukraine. The ability of agri-food entities to withstand the effects of negative institutional factors, crises, adaptively and promptly make adjustments and respond to changes in the market environment in the agri-food market. The concept of integrating the mechanisms of domestic agri-food markets into global value chains makes sense, as it can bridge the gap between government policy and the realities of the food business.