Exploitative Working Conditions Research Articles

Migrant workers in Irish fisheries: exploring the contradictions through the lens of racial capitalism

Exploitative working conditions for migrant workers in industrial fisheries have recently drawn considerable attention among activists and scholars, often with a focus on Asian fisheries. Even so, fish work can offer a better livelihood option than migrant workers might have in their home countries. These contradictions are apparent in fisheries around the world, including those based in Europe and North America. In this paper we explore the incongruities and patterns of working conditions for migrant workers in Irish fisheries, situating how the global seafood industry relies on a racialised labour force that is devalued to produce raw materials for high-value seafood products, before turning to an analysis of a decades-long campaign to improve Ireland’s legal framework for migrant fish workers. Persistent campaign work illustrates how a multi-pronged approach, including legal strategies and actions to make the injustices in Irish fisheries more visible, is critical to provoking change, even as working conditions remain far short of most land-based sectors in that country.

Exposing the mess in the online kitchen: Bon Appetit and digital continuities in legacy media’s workplace exploitations

Traditional media’s convergence with online media platforms intensifies the already unpaid and unrecognized affective, immaterial and emotional labor expected of women of color and other historically marginalized media workers. This article uses the example of Bon Appetit (BA) and the downfall of their popular YouTube channel to argue that understanding this intensification is critical to envisioning possibilities for media workers to address exploitative working conditions. In the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, Black and Brown women food writers took to social media to point out that while BA profited from portraying a diverse workforce on their YouTube channel, the reality was very different. At the time, popular press and social media discourse largely attributed these issues to entrenched histories of racialized and gendered discrimination in legacy media. However, recent research on online platforms has engaged feminist studies, Black studies, and critical STS epistemologies to demonstrate that intersectional oppressions based on race, gender, class, and sexuality are reinscribed in the labor and technical infrastructures of platforms. Together, theorizations of the racialized and gendered aspects of unpaid and unrecognized labor alongside research on the biases reinscribed into algorithmic and internet platform infrastructures inform my analysis of a variety of texts related to the BA YouTube channel: BA YouTube channel metadata and videos, advertising trades coverage of Conde Nast’s digital media efforts, popular press coverage of the racial reckoning at Conde Nast and BA, and disclosures about BA and Conde Nast workplace cultures shared in public interviews by BA workers. By analyzing these texts together, I argue that the downfall of the BA YouTube channel demonstrates how media convergence and the platformization of legacy media intensifies racialized and gendered inequalities for media workers, but opportunities to publicly disclose these discriminatory workplace dynamics also galvanize worker organizing.

The informalisation of precarious work in fishing crew: Experiences of Fijian fishers on distant water vessels

This paper examines the experiences of local fishing crew in Pacific Island states who join distant water fishing vessels, drawing on Fijian fishers as a case study for our discussion. Locally recruited and deployed fishers often face precarious labour conditions on fishing vessels and we discuss their vulnerability using three registers of precarious work: unsafe and exploitative working conditions, wage theft, and the lack of mechanisms for compensation after exiting their work on board the vessels. The experiences of many such crew fit internationally accepted criteria for forced labour. We contest the current characterisation of forced labour on distant water fishing vessels as primarily a problem that applies to Southeast Asian migrants. In developing a greater understanding the experiences of Fijian fishing crew, we draw out how their mode of entry into distant water fishing crew work, and location as Pacific Island nationals recruited in port/ fleet states can contribute to their vulnerability to exploitation.

(Re) Constructing ‘Subservient’ Filipino Migrant Subjectivities

In the 1970s, the Philippine state implemented a labour-export policy to alleviate the country’s economic crisis. This policy centres the needs of employers at the expense of the rights and lives of Filipino migrants. As a consequence, many Filipino migrants find themselves in low-paying, precarious, and exploitative working conditions. However, as foreign employment of Filipino labour is tied to the state’s economic agenda, the Philippine state is caught between protecting the rights of its citizens and economic profits. In this essay, I argue that the Philippine state constructs ‘docile’ and ‘subservient’ migrant subjectivities to serve the state’s neoliberal interests. Although, as migrants learn to become acutely aware of their exploitation, they re-construct a subjectivity premised on challenging the Philippine state’s neoliberal interests through the help of transnational migrant activist groups. This essay employs a qualitative case study analysis of the Philippines’ foremost institution serving migrants, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) and the largest transnational Filipino migrant activist group, Migrante International. I use a Critical Filipino Studies (FilCrit) framework to analyze these case studies. FilCrit recognizes that the institutionalization of migration under US colonization largely influences how Filipinos are incorporated into the global economy to this day. This essay finds that the goals of the Philippine state and migrant activist groups stems from their opposing values. The Philippine state is concerned about its neoliberal agenda, while migrant activist groups are concerned with Filipino migrants’ everyday lives.

The intersectionality of health (in)security: Healthcare, disposable workers, and exposure within Brazil's pandemic politics.

Brazil has suffered severe consequences from the Covid-19 pandemic, currently ranking second globally in terms of total fatalities, with more than 682,000 lives lost. This article critically outlines how a 'health security' framework overlooks processes of intersectionality and the varying impacts of the virus on different segments of society, or what we term health insecurity. We organize our analysis around three aspects of the pandemic that have become salient in Brazilian society, namely access to healthcare, disposable workers, and exposure to the virus, and delineate the intersectional impact of gendered inequality, neoliberal ideologies, and racial hierarchies within these three themes. Our methodology employs media and scholarly interpretations of Covid-19, and other secondary empirical and statistical data, to outline the virus's impacts on differently positioned bodies throughout Brazilian society. Our main findings reveal that during the pandemic, women's labor and health concerns have been undervalued, exploitative working conditions have been exacerbated, and Afro-Brazilians have been put in situations of higher exposure to the virus in both public and private spaces. This article underscores the need to better examine how public health, systems of oppression and exclusion, and (in)security overlap with each other.

Godavari to Gulf: Emigration of Dalit Women for Low-Paid Work

Dalit women suffer from multiple forms of oppression and discrimination based on gender, caste and class prejudices. This article explores the context and ramifications of emigration to the Gulf by Dalit women hailing from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh who are mostly employed as domestic workers. Given the scarce opportunities at the place of origin, transnational migration has a meagre effect on the lives of Dalit women even as it contributes to earnings and the sustenance of household financial needs. This marginal gain, however, has a telling cost in terms of exploitative working conditions, adverse repercussions on mental and physical health as well as intra-family relations. The impact of migration on their overall welfare appears to be insignificant in the absence of state support in both origin and destination countries. The empirical analysis highlights that families of Dalit women, despite emigration, continue to reel under poverty, lack of education and remain exposed to exploitation, discrimination and state apathy.

Labor Recruitment and Human Trafficking: Analysis of a Global Trafficking Survivor Database

Over the past decade, third-party labor recruiters who facilitate employment for migrant workers across low- and middle-income countries have often been considered by the counter-trafficking community as one of the main entry points into human trafficking. In response, anti-trafficking prevention programs have increasingly focused on addressing exploitative recruitment in migrants’ origin countries. Such programs may advocate for increased regulation of migration, greater enforcement actions against unlicensed recruiters, stricter ethical codes of conduct for recruiters and employers, and more pre-departure information about recruitment for migrants. Yet, there remains limited research about the relationship between prospective migrants, recruiters, and human trafficking, and the relative importance of third-party recruitment in the trafficking process. This Research Note draws on the world's largest database of individual victims of trafficking cases, the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Global Victim of Trafficking Database (VoTD), to examine the role and characteristics of recruitment of trafficked victims. The VoTD contains information on nearly 50,000 trafficking victims who were registered for assistance from 2002 to June 2018. Our analysis shows that 94 percent of trafficked victims were recruited, in a broad sense (i.e., not only by third-party intermediaries). Additionally, the data presented here suggest that the relationship between recruitment and trafficking is complex and that forced labor is embedded within the wider structural issues around low-wage labor migration that lead to exploitative work conditions. Interventions to address human trafficking will benefit from strategies that target systemic issues constraining or harming low-wage labor. Further, these findings highlight the value of large-scale administrative datasets in migration research.

Sociological Perspectives of Migrant Health Disparities and Access to Healthcare Services during and beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Voices of Immigrant and Refugee Women in Greece

As the COVID-19 pandemic, as grew into a global health crisis, it created perilous and uncertain situations for vulnerable groups such as migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in the context of measures restricting mobility, social, economic, and educational life. This article, using the fields Sociology of Migration and Sociology of Health, focuses on female immigrants and refugees and their health and access to healthcare services in Greece. According to the results of in-depth interviews, based on the findings of two research projects carried out between 2020-2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic: “Voices of Immigrant Women” (VIW) project (Erasmus+ 2020-1-ES01-KA203-082364) (2020-2022) and “Local Alliance for Integration (LION/GSRI/University of West Attica/81018): Migrant and Refugee integration into local societies in times of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain and Greece” (2021-2022) implementing a qualitative methodology, migrant and refugee women migrants are entrapped in a frame of invisibility, precarious living and exploitative working conditions and discrimination. On the one hand, one of the greatest challenges that Greece is currently facing is the existence of significant disparities in the health services provided to the population in general, and on the other hand, the problem is particularly severe for migrants. The research emphasizes that the health services to female immigrants and refugees are included in an elliptical system of Public Health policy which fails to address significant claims and fields while the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified vulnerability.

Students in Name Only: Improving the Working Conditions of Articled Students Via the Application of the BC Employment Standards Act

Articled students in Canada tend to be exempt from provincial employment standards legislation, which govern minimum hourly wages and overtime and statutory holiday pay rates. Exemption from these provisions, along with the strong power dynamic present in the articled student-principal relationship, has fostered exploitative working conditions for articled students. To justify the exclusion of articled students from employment standards legislation, supporters of the status quo have propagated the narrative that articled students’ labour is not that of an employee, despite evidence to the contrary. In recent years, advocates have proposed various reforms to improve the working conditions of articled students, but they have not targeted employment standards legislation itself. With a focus on British Columbia, this article argues that a better solution to improve the working conditions of articled students is to apply the base provisions of the Employment Standards Act. Further, on closer examination, assertions that such an approach is contrary to the public interest are more rhetorical than substantive.

Voice Mechanisms for Platform-Based Gig Workers

New forms of work, including Platform-based Gig Work and its implication to different stakeholders is at the centre of contemporary academic and practitioner discourse. With the rising popularity of platform-based gig work and an increasing number of workers forming part of the digital workforce, it becomes imperative to identify various challenges encountered by them. Literature has pointed out that the disruption of traditional work structures has led to challenges in form of unfair employment contacts, job security, collective organisation and unionisation. Along with these, absence of voice mechanisms contributes to precariousness and exploitative work conditions. Our paper looks into such challenges faced by the platform-based gig workers in voicing their concerns with respect to various actors namely: platform owners, service requesters, co-workers and regulatory authorities. We propose alternate voice mechanisms and policy signals relevant in context of the new work arrangements.

Decent work in a seascape of livelihoods: Regional evaluation of the shrimp and groundfish fishery of the Guianas-Brazil shelf

With growing evidence of labor violations and exploitative working conditions in fisheries, ensuring decent work is imperative to protect fishers and fishworkers in the global seafood sector. This study provides the first evaluation of decent work in a shared, transboundary fishery – the shrimp and groundfish fishery of the Guianas-Brazil Shelf. Decent work in fisheries has gained increasing attention and research, yet gaps exist in our understanding of the elements of decent work, how we evaluate it, and how to enable decent work. To date, there has been limited analysis of decent work in a range of geographies and diverse fisheries contexts, including small-scale fisheries and transboundary fisheries. This study will address this gap by evaluating decent work, utilizing a new fishery-specific, holistic evaluation framework drawing from existing frameworks including the ILO Work in Fishing Convention (C188), the Monterey Framework for Social Responsibility, and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries. This evaluation details country-level challenges that put fishers and fishworkers at risk in their occupation, including illegal fishing, vessel safety, and worker representation. This paper concludes with recommendations, to be advanced with a transboundary, regional approach, to ensure decent work and strengthen existing progress, including 1) addressing widespread illegal activities, 2) adopting fisheries-specific standards like C188, 3) implementing and enforcing policies at the country and regional level, and 4) ensuring worker representation and participation leveraging cooperatives and collectives.

Death from Overwork in a Time of Pandemic: How Delivery Work Became a Locus of Public Debate in South Korea

During the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea, the plight of delivery workers suddenly became a locus of public debate. On the surface, this seems puzzling. Although the severely exploitative working conditions of delivery workers have been endemic for decades, these conditions had never before caused a society-wide controversy. Drawing insights from Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of societalisation, this article examines how the global health crisis not only worsened working conditions but also provided opportunities for workers and labour unions to problematise previously neglected aspects of labour exploitation. The analysis identifies three different states of the issue: (i) the disregard for ill-treatment of delivery workers, (ii) the emergence of shocking narratives, and (iii) attempts to regulate the practices of contract-based labour.

To “Throw Off the Cloak of Representation”

To “Throw Off the Cloak of Representation”

Rehabilitation of Rescued Children from Worksites in India

A large number of children in India still work under highly exploitative working conditions. In spite of magnificent efforts, the problem of child labor has compounded into more complex issues intertwined with child trafficking, forced labor, missing children, and many other worst forms of childhood struggles. There is a general postulation that in reality the rehabilitation measures are not so effective. The phenomenon of the recycling of child labor divulges that the rescued children again join the workforce after a small gap either at the same place in the same city or at different places in different cities. The paper is aimed to study the realities of rehabilitation in order to understand intertwined issues relating to rehabilitation of rescued children from worksites as well as the present state of affairs. The paper has specifically explored the process of rescue challenges, the mechanisms devised and implemented for rehabilitation of these children, and the effectiveness of initiatives intended for reintegrating rescued children in societal mainstream. It discovered that the realities of rehabilitation are quite painful and a sad commentary on our efforts of rehabilitation. The compensation, back wages, or rehabilitation money has passes through different layers before reaching the rescued child. Once received, it is generally used for different purposes –such as buying animals, construction/repair of house, daughter’s marriage, and repaying to contractor who provided the employment. In some cases, cut/convenience money is also paid to the person responsible for releasing compensation. The time frame for receiving compensation/rehabilitation money varies from 6 to 36 months. As an estimate, approximately one-fifth of the rescued children never join school after rehabilitation because of poor economic conditions of their families, and many drop out to rejoining workforce. The paper has also explored various gaps in their rehabilitation and suggested recommendations for more efficient, effective, and efficacious rehabilitation of children freed from worksites.

Challenges to increasing visibility and support for children in Bangladesh's informal ready‐made garment factories

AbstractWorker voice tools can support multinational companies to monitor social compliance within complex multi‐tier apparel supply chains. This study presents findings from an adaptation of a worker voice tool that contacted 11,555 workers in two informal ‘Ready‐made Garment’ (RMG) production hubs in Bangladesh. Results indicate a high level of child labour, particularly among boys, and present characteristics of exploitative working conditions. The authors also share challenges in facilitating support services for identified child labourers. This study informs multi‐sectoral strategies for business adherence to sustainable supply chain management, and government commitment to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 for Decent Work and Economic Growth.

Politics of Sweatshop Labour

This paper provides a political account of sweatshop labour by highlighting the role of political actors in establishing and sustaining exploitative working conditions in global sweatshops. In academic debates on sweatshop labor, the focus has been mostly on the responsibility of business or consumers (cf. Arnold and Bowie 2007, Meyers 2007, Zoller 2015), albeit there are some authors who deal with the role of trade unions and civil society (cf. Kabeer 2000). To provide a broader picture, I draw on the differentiation between extractive and inclusive institutions made by development economists Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) and apply this account to the sweatshop issue. I will argue that sweatshops are a political rather than an economic issue, and substantiate my claim by drawing on the Chinese household registration system hukou, and the political background conditions in Bangladesh.

Louisiana Guestworker Health and Safety a Necessary Component of Health Equity: Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Guestworkers are a critical labor component of many industries considered essential to U.S. infrastructure. Despite their essential role in the U.S. labor force, guestworkers are vulnerable to exploitative labor practices. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded guestworkers’ vulnerability to include a lack of public health protective measures in addition to longstanding labor abuses. The pandemic has created greater public health awareness about structural determinants of health inequities, such as unsafe and exploitative working conditions. As public health increases its focus on social and structural determinants of health, it can contribute to improved labor conditions for guestworkers. This article highlights guestworkers’ experiences in Louisiana's crawfish industry to demonstrate the marginalized role of guestworker labor in a major Louisiana industry. This article also examines local public health approaches that can bring attention and resources to labor issues.

Crossing the doorsteps for social reform: The social crusades of Florence Kelley and Ellen Richards.

This paper contrasts the research strategies of two women reformers, Florence Kelley and Ellen Swallow Richards, which entailed different strategies of social reform. In the early 1890s, social activist Florence Kelley used the social survey as a weapon for legal reform of the working conditions of women and children in Chicago's sweatshop system. Kelley's case shows that her surveys were most effective as "grounded" knowledge, rooted in a local community with which she was well acquainted. Her social survey, re-enacted by lawmakers and the press, provided the evidence that moved her target audience to legal action. Chemist and propagator of the Home Economics Movement Ellen Richards situated the social problem, and hence its solution, not in exploitative working conditions, but in the inefficient and wasteful usage of available resources by the poor. Laboratory work, she argued, would enable the development of optimal standards, and educational programs should bring these standards to the household by means of models and exhibits. With this aim, she constructed public spaces that she ran as food laboratories and sanitary experiments. Kelley and Richards thus crossed the doorsteps of the household in very different ways. While Florence Kelley entered the household to change the living and working conditions of the poor by changing the law, Richards flipped the household inside out by bringing women into hybrid public laboratory spaces to change their behavior by experiment and instruction.

Mandatory mobility? The case of immigrant posted workers sent from Italy to Belgium in the construction sector

AbstractThe impact of the economic crisis on the Italian economy has stimulated onward migration towards Central and Northern Europe and forms of temporary labour migration, such as the posting of workers, which involves Italian workers and EU and non‐EU workers immigrated to Italy. Based on 18 semi‐structured interviews with trade unionists, labour inspectors and experts, this paper studies the posting of immigrant workers from Italy to the Belgian construction sector by analysing the case of the Rive Gauche building site, where some Italian companies employed posted workers immigrated from Albania, Egypt, India, Kosovo and Romania. The findings show how economic reasons and restrictive migration policies force immigrants to accept exploitative working conditions and how the labour market and work organization transformations in the construction sector are expanding this phenomenon. The spread of TCNs’ postings and the intersection of multiple discriminations pose new challenges to trade unions and labour and migration policies.

Experiences of female agricultural workers in Michigan: Perspectives from the Michigan Farmworker Project

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Agricultural work is recognized as one of the most physically demanding and hazardous occupations worldwide and farmworkers face a myriad of complex social vulnerabilities that create greater health risks from these occupational exposures. Although demographically the United States farming industry mainly employs male workers, about 33% are female, and they face unique working conditions that are relatively understudied. In the present study, we examine the unique social and occupational hazards female farmworkers face, utilizing data from the Michigan Farmworker Project, a community-engaged project that seeks to understand the working and living conditions of farmworkers in Michigan. METHODS: We conducted in-depth interviews with farmworkers (n=34) and health, legal, and social service providers (n=21) in four Michigan counties with higher concentration of farmworkers. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically using NVivo 12. The present analysis primarily draws on interviews with female farmworkers. RESULTS:Female farmworkers in our study (n=19; average age=40) reported hazardous and exploitative working conditions such as lack of ventilation, chemical exposures, harmful weather conditions, and problems with proper hygiene and sanitation especially during menstruation, including lack of bathroom access and problems leading to urinary tract infections. Participants discussed pregnancy-specific concerns (i.e., chemical exposures, lack of disclosure of pregnancy to supervisors due to fear, lack of access to prenatal and postnatal care, inability to breastfeed due to work schedule) and concerns regarding children (i.e., lack of childcare, inappropriate living conditions for children). Other themes included sexual harassment and assault, disproportionately excluded from employment consideration due to gender, and social isolation. CONCLUSIONS:Our findings suggest that female farmworkers are disproportionately burdened with occupational hazards and lack social and labor protections to ensure their health and well-being and that of their families. Study results can inform policies and interventions to improve working and living conditions for female workers. KEYWORDS: Female, Occupational epidemiology, Occupational exposures, Environmental justice, Environmental disparities, Pregnancy outcomes