Labour standards and regulation in global value chains: The case of the New Zealand Fishing Industry

Christina Stringer, Steve Hughes, D Hugh Whittaker, Nigel Haworth and Glenn Simmons

Environment and Planning A, 2016, vol. 48, issue 10, 1910-1927

Abstract: Building on the concept of polarity in global value chains, we explore how the nature of the governance of a global value chain can evolve and how contingencies can reshape governance arrangements. A case-study of the New Zealand fishing industry highlights how parties inside and outside the global value chain came to contest labour standards, laying the base for credible regulation. In 2011 through a series of convergent events, migrant crew on board South Korean fishing vessels, hitherto exploited, abused and isolated, emerged as a significant actor to bring about a clear transition in the governance of a multipolar global value chain. In this paper, we analyse the series of events which led to regulatory change and consider whether the dynamics from the case offer lessons for improving labour standards and regulation in global value chains more generally.

Keywords: Global value chains; multipolar governance; labour chains; fishing industry; labour exploitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X16652397 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:10:p:1910-1927

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16652397

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().