ABSTRACT
Globalization, responsibility, and migration Globalization, in its prevailing and most celebrated form today, brings an increasing proportion of the world’s population directly into capitalist finance, labor, and consumer markets. However, the “flows” of labor, as well as capital, goods, services, and knowledge, are admittedly uneven in this process (see, for example, Zlotnik 1998). From a broadly critical perspective, one drawback to such market expansion and integration is the further commodification of labor itself (Desmond 1995). As a result, laborers can easily be denied agency and rights under particular policies, whether those policies and their resulting practices are chiefly governmental, corporate, or NGO-based (Overbeek 2002). Unfortunately, this has especially been the case for migrant workers in some of the most labor-intensive industries (Yu 2008). For instance, working conditions for textile, footwear, agribusiness, tourism, and mining workers continue to deteriorate despite the increased attention to human rights in other areas of life (e.g., Van Tulder and Kolk 2001; Wang 2005; Jones et al. 2007; Tepelus 2008; Yu 2008). The worsening migrant labor working conditions have also been highlighted by extensive media coverage and nongovernmental activist campaigns (e.g., Ross 2006) that have sought to make the term “sweatshop” a household name (Yu 2008). In response to media exposure and activist efforts, corporations and nongovernmental organizations alike have drafted corporate social responsibility (CSR) codes that draw attention to businesses’ voluntary commitment to ethical and responsible practices and sustainable growth. These codes were created to underscore the social responsibilities of corporations in a number of areas, including environmental sustainability, labor and human rights, ethical standards, community building, and even the ethical conduct of suppliers. Expanded models of CSR have begun to replace single-enterprise models such that many corporations are now viewed to have multiple obligations that govern joint ventures, licenses, and supply contracts across their entire production chains and lines (Diller 1999). In other words, these codes of conduct are
written not just for stakeholders and the public but also for suppliers and contractors. For instance, Reebok now requires its labor contractors to adhere to its ethical standards for labor (Yu 2008). With respect to labor, these codes of conduct present voluntary standards, which specify norms and rules to evaluate labor practices in the workplace (Diller 1999; O’Rourke 2003; Frenkel and Kim 2004).1 These codes are usually developed either independently by the corporation or in collaboration with business support groups, such as the International Chamber of Commerce (Van Tulder and Kolk 2001).2
