Keywords

Since the 2000’s, relational analytical approaches have become popular in economic geography as a conceptual alternative to scalar approaches for analysing the global economy (Amin 2002; Dicken et al. 2001; Hudson 2004; Jones and Murphy 2010a, 2010b). Relational approaches have been developed and advanced by scholars such as Ash Amin (2002, 2004), Nigel Thrift (1996, 2008) and Doreen Massey (1994, 1999). These scholars have emphasised ‘network practices’ and ‘relational connectivity’ as key features of economic geographies emerging under globalised capitalism (c.f. Amin 2002: 389ff.). Due to their focus on practices as central constituents of social and economic phenomena, relational approaches to the global economy insert themselves within a broader body of practice-oriented work in economic geography.

Practice-oriented work in economic geography is unified by the general concern to connect context, structures and individual agency. This is done through a focus on practices, which are defined as “stabilised, routinised, or improvised social actions that constitute and reproduce economic space” (Jones and Murphy 2010b: 366). In this light, two central meta-theoretical assumptions can be identified that are common to relational approaches in economic geography. Ontologically, relational approaches can be characterised as broadly underpinned by a constructivist paradigm. They do not take economic structures, such as markets, institutions or class relations as conceptual pre-givens, but instead regard them as actively constructed, continuously reproduced and potentially contested in and through socio-economic practices (Hudson 2004: 451; Jones and Murphy 2010b: 372). From this ontological assumption follows the epistemological belief that “to understand higher-order (i.e., local, regional, national, or global scale) economic and social outcomes (e.g., performance, innovation, integration, inequality, exploitation, markets) it is necessary to […] closely observe and understand the micro-social activities (i.e., practices) carried out and performed by people living, labo[u]ring, and creating in the everyday economy” (Jones and Murphy 2010b: 376).

In this chapter, I adopt the focus on practices as constituents of socio-economic structural phenomena as well as a conceptual emphasis on networks and connectivity to develop a relational, practice-oriented approach for analysing labour control regimes and labour agency in GPNs. By doing so, I address the limitations of hitherto dominant scalar approaches, which have not sufficiently explored the interconnections and interdependencies between processes, relationships and practices of labour control and labour agency at different levels (see Sects. 2.3.4 and 2.4.4).

The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows: In the next section, I first outline central conceptual contributions of relational approaches regarding the analytical categories networks, place/space, scale and territories. Thereafter, I develop heuristic frameworks for analysing labour control regimes and union agency in GPNs from a relational perspective.

1 A Relational Perspective on Networks, Space/Place, Scale and Territories

A central aim of relational approaches in economic geography is to develop a conceptual alternative to scalar interpretations of the socio-spatialities of globalisation (Amin 2002, 2004; Dicken et al. 2001; Massey 1994, 1999; Thrift 1996). These scalar interpretations emphasise, how under globalisation socio-spatial orders are being transformed through the ‘re-scaling’ of specific socio-economic processes and practices, which are moved from ‘higher’ to ‘lower’ scales or vice versa (see e.g. Brenner 1999; Cox 1998; Smith 1993). Scales tend to be understood in the context of scalar interpretations of globalisation as separate, bounded territorial entities that precede and contain social activities and provide “an already partitioned geography” (Smith 1993: 101; see also MacKinnon 2011: 24). Relational thinkers in economic geography, such as Amin (2004: 33), oppose such a ‘re-scaling’ imaginary for ignoring the intertwined flows and connections that characterise contemporary economic geographies, where local territories—such as cities and regions—form constitutive parts of broader global economic networks. In addition, relational approaches have criticised scalar approaches to globalisation for privileging one particular scale or a bifurcation of scales (e.g. global–local) and hence to develop analyses that “preclude alternatives and that obscure subtle variations within, and interconnections between, different scales” (Dicken et al. 2001: 90).

Against this backdrop, relational approaches in economic geography propose to replace the imaginary of hierarchically nested territorial scales as central ordering features of the global economy with the imaginary of multiple horizontally intertwined networks that connect actors, practices and places across various distances (Dicken et al. 2001). From a relational perspective, networked relationships represent the central socio-spatial ordering features of the globalised economy. Relational approaches conceptualise the networks of actors and practices constituting the economy as “relational processes, which, when realised empirically within distinct and time- and space-specific contexts, produce observable patterns in the global economy” (Dicken et al. 2001: 91). From a relational perspective, networks as central socio-spatial ordering features are both relational and structural: Networks are relational, since they are constituted through practices of routinised interactions between various actors. These interactions are driven by actors’ interests and intentions (Dicken et al. 2001: 96). At the same time, networks are structural in that the specific composition of intertwined relationships between variously powerful actors “constitute structural power relations in which exclusions and inequalities exist” (Dicken et al. 2001: 95). Hence, while networks are constituted through routinised interaction practices in the first place, they also provide the structural context for these interactions. Within networks, spaces for the agency of specific actors are determined by actors’ power to shape the nature of interactions and to include or exclude other actors (Dicken et al. 2001: 94f.).

The conceptual imaginary of structural/relational networks as central ordering features of the global economy has specific implications for interpreting key geographical analytical concepts such as space, place and scale and territories (c.f. Jessop et al. 2008). Following this imaginary, economic space can be understood as constituted through a mesh of horizontally intertwined and spatially stretched networks, within which money, resources and power flow between actors and places (Amin 2004: 34). Such a relational notion of space rejects the assumption that space “exists as an entity in and of itself, over and above material objects [or actors] and their spatiotemporal relations and extensions” (Jones 2009: 491). Rather, space emerges from and is constituted through networks and event relations that connect actors, material objects and places. As such, space has no a priori hierarchical order, but such order may emerge from power flows within the networks that constitute space (c.f. Schmid 2020: 108).

From this point of view, places, in turn, can be conceptualised as nodes within broader networks, where multiple relationships of different lengths intersect and become spatially immanent in specific moments of articulation (Amin 2002: 391). In this sense, Schmid (2020: 71) argues that “the notion of place contextualise[s] (global) power relations that are always produced in concrete sites”. Whereas this understanding of ‘place’ refers to ‘the local’ as a specific part of broader ‘space’, a second reading of ‘place’ is possible from a relational perspective. This reading comprehends place in the sense of concrete sites for human interaction that are constituted through the links of “bodies, artefacts, things, meanings and practices that meet in time and space” (Schmid 2020: 69). In both readings, however, places inevitably need to be understood as constitutive elements of those network relations constituting broader ‘space’.

This dialectical understanding of space and place has important implications for the concept of scale. Dicken et al. (2001: 95) point out that from a relational perspective, “it becomes meaningless to talk of [ontologically distinct] local versus global processes as in much of the global–local literature”. Consequently, relational approaches have proposed an alternative conception of the scales of social and economic life as “practices and relations of different spatial stretch and duration” (Amin 2002: 389). Relational approaches are congruent with scalar approaches in that they recognise the spatiality of social and economic relationships, which give rise to specific socio-spatial orderings. However, relational approaches reject a priori assumptions about specific, reified ‘architectures of scale’ (c.f. MacKinnon 2011: 22). Instead, the socio-spatial order of specific networks needs to be carved out empirically by mapping its constitutive social relations (c.f. Marston et al. 2005: 426). In this sense, relational analytical approaches are compatible with multi-scalar heuristics, as long as scales are not understood as hierarchical, discrete entities, but rather as spatial stretches that are interwoven in specific networks. Such a relational understanding of scale allows us to understand actors, processes, relationships and practices at various scales—including the workplace, the neighbourhood, the nation-state and the globe—as equally and mutually constitutive of the globalising economy (Dicken et al. 2001: 95).

Whereas in global networks, relationships at various scales are interwoven, networks themselves may also exist at multiple levels. Some networks are boundless, connecting actors and places across various countries and territorial boundaries; other networks are relatively localised in the sense that the relationships that constitute them are bound to specific territories (Henderson et al. 2002; Hess 2004 see also Sect.2.1). In this sense, relational approaches are not opposed to the concepts of ‘territory’ and ‘territoriality’. However, in contrast to ‘territorial’ spatial approaches which tend to treat territories as conceptual givens, relational approaches emphasise the social construction of territories through practices and relationships (Jones 2009: 494; Paasi 2003). In a relational understanding, territories are constructed through practices of ‘classifying by area’, i.e. of categorising people and things located in space, and enacted through practice relationships between actors within that area (Paasi 2003; Jones 2009). Consequently, from a relational standpoint, territories are not “frozen frameworks” but “typically contested and actively negotiated” (Paasi 2003: 110).

In summary, relational approaches emphasise the interweaving of practices, actors, places and territories within economic space. Therefore, networks—or, more accurately, networked relationships—become the central socio-spatial ordering feature of the economy. These networks are both structural and relational; they represent contested fields within which actors exercise power by including or excluding other actors and places from these networks. Networks may go beyond territorial boundaries or they may be tied to specific territories, whereas, in the latter case, networks and territories may also be considered as mutually constitutive.

As laid out in Sect. 2.1, this type of relational thinking informed the inception of the GPN framework as a “relational framework for analysing the global economy” in the early 2000s (Dicken et al. 2001; Coe et al. 2008: 272f.). However, as illustrated in the preceding literature review, particularly within literature on labour in GPNs, relational perspectives have been overshadowed by scalar analytical perspectives. Against this background, with this book, I aim to bring the relational perspective that informed the early GPN framework back into debates on labour control and labour agency in GPNs. To this end, I highlight the networked character of the ‘architectures of labour control’ underpinning GPNs and of local unions’ agency strategies in GPNs. With the two heuristic frameworks developed in the remainder of this chapter, I aim to reveal how everyday practices of labour control and labour agency in GPNs are intertwined in multiple processual relationships stretching across various distances and territories. I propose that it is only by focussing on the dialectic and mutually constitutive relationship between ‘local’ and ‘global’ processes and practice relations, and between territorially embedded and network dynamics that we can really comprehend the relational constitution and workings of labour control and labour agency in GPNs. Such comprehension is in turn crucial to understand the conditions that constrain and enable the building of local union power in garment producing countries, as will be shown in the empirical analysis in Chapters 6 and 7.

In the following two sections, I develop two heuristic frameworks for studying labour control and union agency in GPNs through the lens of a relational perspective.

2 A Relational Approach to Labour Control Regimes in GPNs: Intertwining Processual Relations of Labour Control

Gaining a refined understanding of the ‘labour control architectures’ underpinning a particular GPN is crucial for understanding the structural contexts and constraining conditions that shape and potentially limit spaces for the agency of local unions. In this section, I develop a relational, practice-oriented approach for analysing these labour control architectures. I start from the conceptual assumption that we need to understand GPNs not primarily as networks of firms but rather as networks of territorially embedded labour processes, which lie “at the heart at the heart of all systems of commodity production” under capitalism (Cumbers et al. 2008). Labour processes are necessarily territorially embedded because they are tied to the practices of labouring bodies who are located in space and who—as David Harvey (1989: 19) famously stated—‘need to go home every night’. Moreover, many labour processes depend on specific material infrastructure that is (at least temporarily) fixed in specific places (Harvey 1989). This is the case particularly in the labour-intensive export industries ‘at the bottom’ of GPNs, which produce mass consumer goods in Fordist production arrangements. Labour processes in these industries are usually tied to material infrastructure in the form of large factories hosting workers, machines and production facilities (see e.g. Kumar 2014; Ngai and Smith 2007; Smith and Pun 2006).

To ensure the extraction of surplus value in and the unobstructed reproduction of territorially embedded labour processes at specific nodes of a GPN, labour control regimes are necessary (see Sect. 2.3.2). In this light, I propose that we can think of the ‘labour control architectures’ underpinning GPNs as a mesh of intertwined, place-specific labour control regimes. These place-specific labour control regimes emerge around labour processes at specific nodes of the GPN from the intertwining of various institutionalised, processual relations, which, together, ensure the reproduction of the labour process in its profit-maximising form. All these processual relations are constituted through networks of routinised practices of labour control that link diverse actors across various distances. Drawing on Neethi’s (2012) extended notion of labour control (see Sect. 3.2), labour control practices are defined here as encompassing exploiting and disciplining practices, on the one hand, and all practices that directly or indirectly ensure the smooth reproduction of the labour process on the other hand. Therefore, I consider the following three types of practices as labour control practices: (1) exploiting practices directed at minimising labour costs while maximising labour productivity; (2) disciplining practices directed at undermining or preventing collective labour organisation; (3) practices that contribute to (re-)producing the broader conditions for capitalist production.

As a result, the processual relations intertwined in labour control regimes are linked to the labour control process in various ways and fulfil different functions in relation to the capitalist accumulation process. More specifically, processual relations that are interwoven in labour control regimes either (1) directly shape the labour process through exploiting practices directed at maximising surplus value, (2) ensure the subordination of labour to the labour process through disciplining practices or (3) secure the broader conditions for the reproduction of the labour process, such as securing adequate labour supply.

In doing so, processual relations that are interwoven in labour control regimes also shape the terrain for labour agency at a specific node of the GPN in two regards. On the one hand, these processual relations represent ‘contested fields’ (c.f. Levy 2008), that are the subject of potential disputes between capital and labour and that may be challenged and transformed when the capital-labour balance is shifted in favour of workers. But, on the other hand, the processual relations that constitute the labour control regime constrain the opportunities for workers and unions to build and/or activate the power resources that would enable them to shift the capital-labour power balance.

Without claiming this to be an exhaustive list, in this study, I identify six processual relations that intersect with the labour process at specific nodes of a GPN and constitute labour control regimes. These six relations are: sourcing relations at the vertical ‘network’ dimension of the GPN, and territorially embedded wage relations, workplace relations, industrial relations, employment relations and labour market relations at the horizontal dimension of the GPN. These processual relations show distinct socio-spatial features and linkages to the labour process. The following list gives a short characterisation of each type of relations, including their spatial extension, the actors and practices that hang together in them, their function within the broader labour control regime (i.e. exploiting, disciplining or securing the broader conditions for capital accumulation), the intersections of these labour control relations with the labour process and their implications for labour agency.

  • Sourcing relations link global lead firms within a GPN with local suppliers at the various nodes of the GPN; they are therefore situated at the vertical ‘network’ dimension of the GPN. Since lead firms have the power to set up and control geographically dispersed supplier networks, sourcing relations are primarily constituted through lead firms’ purchasing practices as well as through lead firm practices of managing supplier pools and organising the sourcing process. Various studies have highlighted how lead firms’ exploitative sourcing practices shape localised labour processes at specific nodes of a GPN, for example through ‘squeezing prices’. As a result, suppliers rely on a range of exploitation practices to ensure value capture for both themselves and the lead firm (see e.g. Anner 2019, 2020). Therefore, these studies have argued that to transform exploitative practices in the workplace, unions must also tackle the sourcing practices of lead firms through networked agency strategies (López 2021).

  • Wage relations link workers, employers and state actors within a specific region, state or country. Wage relations are hence territorially embedded and usually structured through specific legal-institutional frameworks that fix, for example, statutory minimum wages or regulations for collective wage bargaining within a particular territory. Practices that constitute wage relations may either enact these frameworks or seek to circumvent or undermine these frameworks to minimise labour costs. Wage relations intersect with the labour process, because wage levels directly influence the amount of surplus value that employers are able to generate from the labour process. At the same time, wage relations are shaped by capital-labour power relations: Where labour power is weak, wage relations tend to be shaped predominantly by exploitative employer practices that ensure maximum surplus extraction through keeping wages low. Where labour power is high, workers may, however, be able to contest employers’ exploiting practices and hence to achieve a more equitable redistribution of the surplus value produced in the labour process through higher wages. Wage relations therefore do not only represent a domain of exploitation within labour control regimes but also a field of contestation between capital and labour.

  • Workplace relations are constituted through the interaction practices between workers and management in a specific site of production. Workplace relations are usually localised and territorially embedded. Workplace relations tend to emerge around place-specific legal-institutional frameworks for worker representation, worker-management dialogue or co-determination. The way these legal-institutional frameworks are enacted in a specific site of production is highly shaped by capital-labour power relations in the workplace. In workplaces where workers have low bargaining power, workplace relations potentially represent a domain of labour control since managers are then able to construct workplace relations through disciplining practices directed at suppressing collective worker organisation. In contrast, when workers possess high workplace bargaining power due to strong collective organisation and/or their strategic position in the GPN (see Sect. 2.4.1), they may be able to construct workplace relations through practices of genuine worker management dialogue that can help to improve workers’ conditions.

  • Industrial relations are constituted through territorially embedded relationships between employers and their organisations, workers and their organisations, and the state in a specific region, sector and/or country. Industrial relations are usually constructed around legal frameworks of collective bargaining and industrial dispute settlement. In this sense, industrial relations intersect with workplace relations as well as with wage relations. Due to the special role of collective worker representation by trade unions vis-à-vis employers and state actors, which exceeds interactions at the workplace and addresses topics beyond wages, I however treat industrial relations as a separate set of relations. Industrial relations are usually the domain that may allow workers to activate institutional power resources in the form of legal frameworks for ensuring labour rights and settling industrial disputes. However, studies have shown that in many industrial export sectors ‘at the bottom’ of GPNs, where workers possess low structural and associational power, state actors and employers frequently undermine the implementation of these legal frameworks through a variety of disciplining practices (see e.g. Anner 2015a; Ruwanpura 2015). In these cases, employers’ and state actors’ disciplining practices significantly constrain the terrain for worker organising and collective bargaining.

  • Employment relations are constituted through the interrelated practices that form the relationship between employers and workers, in which workers sell their labour power to an employer. Consequently, employment relations link employers with individual workers. Employment relations may also be mediated through third parties such as temporary work agencies. Employment relations are usually also territorially embedded since they are generally structured through legal frameworks that apply to a specific territory and that define the rights and obligations of employers and employees. Studies have shown that employers in export sectors ‘at the bottom of GPNs’ rely on various exploiting and disciplining practices when constructing employment relations. First, employers construct employment relationships that allow them to outsource economic risks to workers through flexible, informal and/or mediated employment models such as piece-rate work or contract work (see e.g. Anner 2019; Mezzadri 2017). Second, employers construct employment relationships that increase workforce segmentation to save labour costs and to hamper collective worker organisation (e.g. Flecker 2009; Flecker and Meil 2011; Flecker et al. 2013). As a result, employment relations represent a potential field of contestation for workers and unions, who may seek to challenge employers’ practices of constructing exploitative employment relations. However, employers’ employment practices may also constrain workers’ and unions’ capacities to build associational power resources.

  • Labour market relations are defined here as the practices and relationships that secure adequate labour supply and thereby contribute to ensuring the broader conditions for capital accumulation at a specific node of a GPN. Practices that constitute labour market relations include recruiting practices, linking employers, workers and potentially third-party actors such as head hunters or recruiting agencies. Moreover, labour market relations are constituted through training and skilling practices, which link workers and employers with educational and training organisations. Compared to wage, workplace, industrial and employment relations, which are usually spatially delimited, the spatial extension of labour market relations is flexible. Labour market relations may be rather localised, when they are constructed around local or regional (often informal) networks (see e.g. Kelly 2001; Padmanabhan 2012). Labour market relations may, however, also be rather unbounded when they are constructed around national or international migration regimes that link workers and employers from different regions within a country (see e.g. Ngai and Smith 2007) or even across countries (see e.g. Azmeh 2014; Pye 2017). Labour market relations represent an important structural context for the agency of labour since the nature of the relations and practices that constitute labour markets may enhance or constrain workers’ marketplace bargaining power at specific nodes of the GPN (see Sect.2.4.1). In situations of limited local labour supply, workers’ marketplace bargaining power increases, enabling workers to demand higher wages. In these cases, to hedge labour’s increased marketplace bargaining power, employers need to expand the territory of the labour market, e.g. through setting up migration regimes to channel surplus labour force from geographically more or less distant places into localised labour processes.

In a nutshell, labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN emerge from the intertwining of the six processual relations listed above with the localised labour process. All processual relations of labour control either shape the labour process or secure its reproduction. As illustrated, each set of processual relations has its own socio-spatiality: Sourcing relations are territorially unbounded and usually stretch across various countries, they are therefore characterised by network embeddedness (see Sect. 2.1). On the contrary, wage relations, workplace relations, industrial relations and employment relations are characterised by territorial embeddedness (see Sect. 2.1). They link actors only within the workplace or within a specific region or country, where they also intersect with place-specific social and power relations constructed around categories of age, gender or ethnicity. Moreover, wage relations, workplace relations, industrial relations and employment relations are usually constructed around and (to varying extents) shaped by institutional-legal frameworks linked to specific local, state or national administrative territories. Labour market relations, in turn, vary regarding their territorial extension and type of embeddedness, since they may link workers and employers only within one region or country and across countries. Hence, the place-specific nature of ‘local’ labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN does not result from the localised nature of the practices and relationships that constitute the labour control regime. Instead, the place-specific nature of the labour control regime at a specific node of a GPN results from the particular articulations of multiple processual relations of labour control stretching across various distances with the labour processes at that particular node of the GPN. The various labour control regimes at different nodes of a GPN—that together constitute the ‘architectures of labour control’ underpinning a GPN—are hence characterised by distinctive socio-spatialities that cannot be assumed a priori but that need to be deduced (c.f. Schmid 2020).

Figure 3.1 illustrates how labour control regimes at specific nodes of the GPN emerge from the articulation of the six sets of processual relations at the vertical and horizontal dimensions that intersect with localised labour processes.

Fig. 3.1
An ellipse of horizontal dimension or territorial embeddedness has a radial diagram of labor process or workplace relations. The surrounding labels are employment relations, wage relations, industrial relations, and labor market relations. The labels are linked to the adjacent labels. A horizontal bidirectional arrow has the label relations of age, gender, and ethnicity. A vertical arrow from the sourcing relations has the label vertical dimension or network embeddedness, passes through the ellipse.

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Labour control regime at a specific node of the GPN as constituted through place-specific articulations of processual relations of labour control.

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Linking the labour control regime back to the central question of this study, we can summarise that the labour control regime at a specific node of the GPN represents an important structural context for local union agency for two reasons. First, it shapes the terrain for the agency of local unions since it is constituted through various exploiting practices by capital and state actors that unions need to challenge and transform to improve workers’ conditions. Second, the labour control regime constrains workers’ opportunities to build and/or activate structural, associational and institutional power resources through the disciplining practices that are interwoven in it. Consequently, at nodes of a GPN with tight labour control regimes, workers and unions need to construct their own spaces for agency through constructing processual relations that are not dominated by capital and pro-capital state actors. These spaces can then provide structural contexts, within which workers and unions can develop strategic capacities and build power resources. In the next section, I develop a relational heuristic framework for analysing how unions construct such ‘spaces for labour agency’.

3 A Relational Approach to Union Agency in GPNs: Linking Spaces of Labour Agency

As labour geographers have reiterated, the agency of workers and unions in GPNs is not limited to contesting the networked processual relations of labour control that emerge from the intertwined exploiting and disciplining practices of capital and state actors. In addition, workers and unions forge their own relational networks across various distances and thereby add their own relational layers to the GPN (see e.g. Cumbers 2015; Hastings 2019; Pye 2017). The relational networks constructed by workers and unions within GPNs are of great analytical importance since they represent structural contexts (besides labour control regimes) that may potentially have enabling effects on workers and unions.

In this light, I propose that we can conceptualise the relational networks constructed by labour actors through the lens of different ‘spaces of labour agency’. As opposed to labour control relations, in which firm and state actors monopolise planning and decision-making practices, spaces of labour agency are primarily constructed through planning, analysing and solidarity-building practices performed by workers, unions and/or their allies (see also Sect. 2.4.4). Within the routinised interactions that constitute spaces of labour agency workers and unions can develop the individual and collective capacities that are fundamental to shifting the capital-labour power balance (see also Gindin 1998). Consequently, spaces of labour agency can provide enabling contexts, within which local unions in GPNs can develop and/or activate different types of power resources and thereby bring about sustained improvements for workers. At the same time, it is essential to note that the processual relations that constitute spaces of labour agency are in themselves structured through flows of resources and power, which may not be distributed equally among all actors. As a result, where power and resources are monopolised, for example by labour’s allies (e.g. NGOs or consumer organisations), the local unions’ strategic capacities and hence their associational and organisational power may be limited.

I distinguish between three spaces of labour agency that are constituted through different types of processual relationships constructed by workers and local unions at specific nodes of a GPN: (1) spaces of organising, (2) spaces of collaboration and (3) spaces of contestation. In the following, I will briefly characterise each space, giving an overview of the practices and actors that are intertwined within these spaces, their spatiality, and of the potential capacities and power resources that workers and unions may build within these spaces:

Unions construct spaces of organising through practices of building solidarity among workers around common interests with the aim to act collectively vis-à-vis capital and state actors. Three types of practices create and constitute spaces of organising: practices of membership recruiting, practices of internal solidarity-building within the union and practices of training and capacity-building. Practices of membership recruiting are directed at building relationships with workers in a specific factory, sector or community to make them become a part of the union. Practices of internal solidarity-building include building relationships among workers as rank-and-file-members, and between rank-and-file-members and union leadership. Practices of training and capacity-building, lastly, are directed at developing workers’ ‘oppositional consciousness’ (Cumbers et al. 2010) and enabling workers to participate in union life. Practices of training and capacity-building may include teaching knowledge on relevant legal frameworks or training workers to participate in collective strategy-building and decision-making processes. Hence, within spaces of organising unions build associational power resources but also organisational power resources.

Spaces of collaboration, in turn, are constructed by local unions through building relationships of collaboration with other labour and non-labour actors. These actors may, for example, be NGOs, consumer campaigning networks, international organisations, community organisations or worker organisations. Unions may construct relationships with these actors for different purposes—from acquiring financial resources through funded project collaborations to activating consumers’ moral power in specific labour struggles. Whereas past studies have highlighted network building by Global South unions with actors from the Global North (see e.g. Anner 2015b; Kumar 2014; Zajak 2017), it is important to note that relationships of collaboration are not limited to transnational relationships. Local unions at a specific node of the GPN may, for example, also build solidary relationships with local community organisations to organise workers outside of formal employment relationships (see Sect. 2.4). In a nutshell, spaces of collaboration serve unions to build ‘coalitional’ or ‘societal’ power resources in the form of moral power or access to financial and informational resources. When collaborative relations with allies involve processes of joint strategy-building and decision-making, these interactions may enhance the strategic capacities of union leaders and members, and thereby contribute to strengthening the union’s organisational and associational power resources.

Lastly, spaces of contestation are those spaces that unions construct around specific labour struggles. Spaces of contestation differ from spaces of organising and spaces of collaboration in that they are constructed primarily through antagonistic relationships with employers, lead firms and, in some cases, state actors as well. At the same time, to exercise leverage against these actors, unions frequently ‘draw’ other allied actors into spaces of contestation to activate moral power resources. As a result, the specific practices through which unions construct spaces of contestation in struggles targeting capital and/or state are interrelated with unions’ practices of building solidary relations within spaces of organising and spaces of collaboration. Only if unions have previously forged solidarity relations within these spaces and thereby built associational and coalitional power resources, will they be able to activate these power resources when constructing spaces of contestation around specific labour struggles. Spaces of contestation are therefore constituted by the intertwining of antagonistic and solidary relationships at various levels. Spaces of contestation may be constructed as territorially embedded spaces when only local capital and state actors, workers and allies are drawn into a conflict. However, spaces of contestation may also intertwine territorial and network spaces when actors in other countries, such as lead firms or consumer groups, are drawn into the conflict. The extent to which union leadership and rank-and-file members are able to develop strategic capacities within spaces of contestation depends, in turn, on the extent to which union leaders and workers actively participate in planning and executing the antagonistic interactions with capital actors that are at the core of spaces of contestation.

It is important to note that the three spaces outlined above are not discrete containers for social action. Instead, they need to be understood as dynamic networks of relationships that variously fold into each other: The collaborative relationships that unions maintain with external actors, for example, influence how unions construct intra-union relations and relations with workers as potential members. At the same time, the practices through which unions construct antagonistic relations with capital actors in specific labour struggles are shaped by unions’ internal relationships and external collaborations. Therefore, to evaluate a union’s strategic approach regarding its capacity for building lasting bargaining power, we need to analyse the practices through which unions construct all three spaces of agency and how these influence each other.

Figure 3.2 provides an exemplary (and non-exhaustive) graphical representation of the different processual relations that potentially constitute each space of labour agency. It is important to note that the actors in the graphical representation do not represent an exhaustive list of all actors with which local unions may potentially build relations but rather an exemplary selection.

Fig. 3.2
A Venn diagram of 3 ellipses for spaces of contestation, organizing, and collaboration. The center point of convergence is local union with internal union relations. 3 ellipses are interlinked through influence. Components inside each ellipse are linked through antagonistic relations and solidary relations.

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Spaces of labour agency in GPNs.

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In summary, each space of labour agency is constituted through a mesh of networked relationships constructed by unions, with each space linking unions to different actors across varying spatial stretches. Neither space can, however, be equated a priori with a specific scale of labour agency. Different unions may construct spaces of organising, collaboration and contestation across different distances. Therefore, the distinctive socio-spatialities of the spaces of labour agency created by a specific union need to be deduced empirically.

The following section summarises the relational approaches to labour control regimes and union agency in GPNs developed so far in this chapter and discusses their analytical benefits.

4 Interim Conclusion: Benefits of a Practice-Oriented, Relational Approach to Labour Control and Labour Agency in GPN

In this chapter, I have developed a relational approach for studying labour control and labour agency—or, more specifically, union agency—in GPNs. In doing so, I have sought to develop a conceptual alternative to dominant scalar approaches for analysing labour control and labour agency in GPNs. My relational approach to labour control in GPNs proposes to conceptualise place-specific labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN as emerging from the articulation of various horizontal (i.e. territorially embedded) and vertical (i.e. ‘network’) processual relations. Together, these relations ensure the reproduction of the localised labour process in its profit-maximising form. Horizontal, territorially embedded processual relations include, for example, workplace relations, wage relations and industrial relations, which are usually constructed around specific locales of production, or within specific administrative territories to which legal-institutional frameworks for wages or collective bargaining are applicable. Vertical, ‘network’ processual relations, in turn, include sourcing relations, which link globally acting lead firms with local suppliers at particular nodes of a GPN. In this light, the ‘local’ character of labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN does not result in the first place from the fact that the practices and actors that constitute it are ‘local’ ones. Instead, place-specific labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN emerge from the unique articulation of territorially embedded processual relations that link actors within a specific workplace, city, region or country and cross-border processual relationships embedded with the broader production networks.

I argue that understanding the interrelations and interdependencies between the various relations constituting labour control regimes at particular nodes of a GPN is paramount to understand the structural context for local union agency in GPNs in two regards. First, a relational perspective focussing on the interconnections between different practices, processes and relations of labour control can advance our understanding of the conditions that constrain unions’ capacities for building and leveraging associational and institutional power resources. I argue that the great challenge for local unions lies specifically in the complex, intertwined nature of labour control regimes in GPNs, in which manifold exploiting and disciplining practices performed by actors in more or less distant places enable and shape each other. As a result, a more nuanced understanding of the relational constitution of the labour control regime as structural context for labour agency is, second, crucial for developing networked labour agency strategies that simultaneously address multiple actors and practices (see Sect. 2.4.3).

To develop and carry out networked agency strategies, local unions need to build their own relational networks independent of those constructed by capital. This is necessary to create spaces in which workers and unions can build power resources and strategic capacities. The relational framework for analysing union agency in GPNs developed in this chapter has proposed to conceptualise unions’ agency strategies as emerging at the intersection of three relational spaces of labour agency: (1) spaces of organising, (2) spaces of collaboration and (3) spaces of contestation. Spaces of organising are constituted through practices and relations that link unionists and union members, on the one hand, and unionists and workers who are not (yet) union members, on the other. Spaces of organising are hence spaces where workers and unions can develop strategic capacities for communicating and mobilising, as well as an active internal union life to build associational and organisational power resources (see Sect. 2.4.2). Spaces of collaboration, in turn, are constructed through unions’ practices of building alliances with other societal actors. By constructing spaces of collaborations, unions and workers may build coalitional power resources granting unions access to financial or informational resources and moral power resources that can be leveraged vis-à-vis capital or state actors. Lastly, spaces of contestation are constructed by unions around specific labour struggles targeting capital and/or state actors. Spaces of contestation consequently differ from spaces of organising and spaces of collaboration in the sense that they are constructed primarily through antagonistic relationships. However, solidarity relations also play a role in spaces of contestation: workers and unions may draw allies into spaces of contestation to activate coalitional and moral power resources. It is important to note that the three spaces are not discrete entities or vessels for social actions, but that the relations they constitute variously shape and fold into each other.

What are the benefits of such a relational, practice-oriented approach for studying labour control regimes and spaces of labour agency at specific nodes of a GPN? I argue that the relational approach to labour control and labour agency in GPNs developed in this book can overcome the limitations of dominant scalar approaches to labour control and labour agency in GPNs. It can provide novel insights that enhance our understanding of the conditions that constrain and enable local union power at particular nodes of a GPN. The relational approach to labour control regimes can enhance our understanding of the constitution of labour control regimes as complex, structural contexts for the agency of local unions at specific nodes of a GPN in three regards: First, the relational approach to labour control regimes developed in this chapter is able to reveal the manifold intertwined practices and relations through which labour control regimes as structural contexts for labour agency are constituted and reproduced. In doing so, the relational approach allows us to grasp the complex, networked structures of labour control, within which various exploiting and disciplining practices enable and shape each other, and to evaluate resulting constraints for union agency.

Second, a relational approach is more sensitive towards the complex socio-spatialities of labour control regimes at different nodes of a GPN. Whereas scalar approaches have tried to fit the spatialities of labour control regimes into universal, pre-defined scalar categories (see Sect. 2.3.4), a relational, practice-oriented approach follows the empirical connections between practices and actors that stretch across various distances. Therefore, a relational analytical approach is able to reveal the distinct socio-spatialities of empirically existing labour control regimes at different nodes of the GPN. This, in turn, allows us to produce more refined analyses of the spatial labour control practices and dynamics that constrain workers’ and unions’ abilities of building power resources.

Third, I argue that the relational analytical perspective developed here allows for an enhanced conceptualisation of the dialectical relationships between labour control and labour agency in GPNs. From a relational perspective, labour control structures are constituted through spatially situated practices and processual (power) relations that may be contested and transformed by labour. A practice approach to labour control structures, thus, gives visibility to the ‘small transformations’ (Latham 2002) through which workers and unions may bring about important improvements for workers.

The relational concept of spaces of labour agency developed in this book is, in turn, well-equipped to generate a more fine-grained understanding of the conditions, contexts and networks that enable workers and unions to challenge and transform practices or even broader relations of labour control. I argue that, particularly in comparison to scalar approaches, the relational approach introduced in this chapter presents three benefits: First, scalar approaches have mostly neglected intra-union relations as an important scale for the agency of workers and unions. However, as laid out in Sect. 2.4.1, unions internal organising practices matter since building democratic intra-union relations and actively involving members in union life is a central condition for building associational and organisational power. By shifting the focus to the networked practices and relations through which unions construct spaces of organising, the here-developed analytical approach is well-equipped to identify organising practices and relations that contribute to building sustained associational and organisational power.

Second, the relational heuristic framework of ‘spaces of labour agency’ developed here allows for a higher sensibility towards variations in the practices through which workers and unions may construct different types of solidary relations at the same scale. Scalar approaches have conflated very different sets of transnational relations forged by workers and unions under the same notion of ‘up-scaling’. By focussing on the practices and power flows that constitute unions’ collaborative networks, the relational analytical approach developed in this chapter sheds light on the distinct constitution of each collaborative network. Moreover, it reveals the distinct capacities and power resources that unions can access in different networks—independent from the scale at which these networks are forged.

Third, the here-developed relational approach allows for a better understanding of how the different types of relationships that workers and unions construct influence each other. The proposed concept of ‘spaces of labour agency’ understands all sets of relations as power-laden and, therefore, structural. Consequently, uneven power flows may create uneven opportunities for capacity development for various powerful actors. By highlighting the structural effects of the networks constructed by workers and unions, the concept of ‘spaces of labour agency’ can grasp the interrelations between external and internal union relations. More specifically, it is able to assess which external relations enable workers and unions to develop internal strategic capacities for building sustained associational and organisational power (see Sect. 2.4.2).

Before applying the relational approach for studying labour control regimes and union agency in GPNs to the Bangalore export-garment cluster, in the next chapter, I first lay out the research design and methodology underpinning this study.