ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 uses cases from the garment and footwear sectors in India, Australia and Myanmar, to examine the surge of homework due to outsourcing and transnational supply chains, where capital has embedded homework. Using supply chains, capital exploits historical and geographic inequalities based on gender, class, race, and colonisation, to maintain cheap and flexible production and maximise profits. At the same time, homeworkers are locked into irregular work on low piece rates, fearful of losing their work, with limited opportunities to collectivise. Associational and symbolic power (Wright 2000; Silver 2003) may be used by workers, who face exclusion in society, to gain recognition and justice.
