ABSTRACT
The reconfiguration of global value chains (GVCs) has fractured the links between industrial and managerial power, on the one hand, and work and employment, on the other, along a number of dimensions (Riisgaard and Hammer 2011). Spatial fragmentation, for example, lies at the heart of economic globalisation: multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) ability to relocate production to low wage and weakly regulated economies has challenged workers’ bargaining power in the Global North. Such restructuring of global production has come with sharp increases in (mostly) exportoriented production as well as commodified employment in the Global South. This was compounded by organisational fragmentation in the form of outsourcing and subcontracting which, together with state regulation favouring foreign direct investment, has further cemented the asymmetry between global product markets and local labour markets.
