Garment-footwear industry and the devaluation of labour: uneven and combined production networks in Europe's peripheries

Francesco Bagnardi

Chapter 10 in Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis, 2025, pp 145-160 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Through the analysis of garment-footwear Global Production Networks (GPNs) developed in Apulia (Southern Italy) and Albania, this chapter shows how both localities are adversely incorporated in global productions through the continuous hierarchization and gendered devaluation of the local workforce. Labour devaluation is, in this case, enabled by a polymorphous articulation of state policies, patriarchal local norms, and uneven and differentiated forms of labour agency. In both regions, labour feminization and employment informalization are the crucial drivers of adverse incorporation and devaluation. Drawing on documentary analysis and interviews with workers, unionists and managers, the chapter develops a historical conjunctural analysis of the garment-footwear GPNs in the regions since the 1960s. It challenges sequential narratives of development, integration and upgrading within global trade and production fluxes, and shows how GPNs can rather rely and develop along multiple geographies of labour devaluation and hierarchization.

Keywords: Global Production Networks; Adverse incorporation; Labour devaluation; Garment-footwear; Albania; Italy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035347933
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