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Sweatshop Workers in Buenos Aires: The Political Economy of Human Trafficking in a Peripheral Country

  • Chapter
Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants

Part of the book series: Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship ((MDC))

Abstract

In March 2006, a fire broke out in a medium-sized garment workshop in the working-class Caballito neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, leading to the death of two Bolivian workers and four children. All of them were living in the place with another 60 people. They could not escape from the sweatshop because the doors were locked. The tragedy triggered the disclosure of thousands of ‘local sweatshops’ (Montero y Arcos, unpublished) that supply small, medium and large local and international brands. In 2010, the Under-Secretariat of Labour calculated that in Buenos Aires city alone there were about 5,000 sweatshops (Lieutier, 2010), and at least double that number in Greater Buenos Aires.1

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Authors
  1. Jerónimo Montero Bressán
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  2. Eliana Ferradás Abalo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Leeds, UK

    Louise Waite (Associate Professor of Human Geography) (Associate Professor of Human Geography)

  2. University of Durham, UK

    Gary Craig (Professor of Social Justice) (Professor of Social Justice)

  3. University of Sheffield, UK

    Hannah Lewis (Vice Chancellor’s Fellow) (Vice Chancellor’s Fellow)

  4. Anti-Slavery International, UK

    Klara Skrivankova (Europe Programme and Advocacy Coordinator) (Europe Programme and Advocacy Coordinator)

Copyright information

© 2015 Jerónimo Montero Bressán and Eliana Ferradás Abalo

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Cite this chapter

Bressán, J.M., Abalo, E.F. (2015). Sweatshop Workers in Buenos Aires: The Political Economy of Human Trafficking in a Peripheral Country. In: Waite, L., Craig, G., Lewis, H., Skrivankova, K. (eds) Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137460417_12

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