The workplace at the bottom of global supply chains as a site of reproduction of colonial relations: Reflections on the cashew‐processing industry in Mozambique

Sara Stevano

Gender, Work and Organization, 2023, vol. 30, issue 2, 496-509

Abstract: In the context of global supply chains, the workplace is a site of realization of global–local interrelations and materialization of class, gender and race exploitation. This paper explores these relations in the Mozambican cashew‐processing factory, the workplace at the bottom of the cashew global supply chain. The aim is to extend the literature on labor and global production networks by addressing the underexplored dimension of the everyday practices of work organization and by centering the interdependence of economic and socio‐cultural relations. Taking a feminist social reproduction perspective and drawing on insights from Quijano's coloniality of labor, the article conceptualizes the workplace at the bottom of global supply chains as a site of reproduction of colonial relations. The workplace is both internally fragmented and embedded within the structures of the local and global economy. Through the internal fragmentation, multiple forms of oppression and exploitation are reproduced. Through the external links with the structures of the local and global economy, the complexity of working lives as well as the colonial relations between employers and workers become visible.

Date: 2023
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