Contribution short abstract:

The paper addresses labor relations in the new colonial possesions of late 19th century Sub-Saharan Africa. Using forms of forced labor the colonizers aimed at integrating their colonies into the growing capitalist world economy. Africans tried to resist through uncommoning and commoning practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The African colonial state of the late 19th century strove to form an agrarian working class of African peasants by ‘educating’ them and pressuring them into wage labor. However, subsistence farming was still a feasible alternative, many Africans were unwilling to perform poorly paid work and local labor systems were still dominant. Colonial officials and European plantation owners constantly complained about the low labor supply since plantations, mines, and colonial infrastructure were extremely labor-intensive. The result was the imposition of forced labor in most African colonies. Besides other measures, head and hut taxes were introduced to force people to work for cash. In German East Africa from 1900 onwards, Africans were pressured to cultivate cotton, and taxes forced them to work on plantations. In Cameroon, the exploitative plantation economy was introduced in the 1890s around Mount Cameroon, where the local population was displaced and forced to work for low wages. However, workers tried to escape from these schemes by uncommoning - e.g. by withdrawing, avoiding headhunters or deserting from plantations. They also used commoning practises e.g. by negotiating for shorter contracts with more leeway or by drawing on local labor systems. The paper will focus on these African workers who were to form the workforce of the growing capitalist colonial economy. It will try to analyse their concrete agency. Using various archival materials and published memoirs of plantation owners and overseers, the paper will address examples from the two German plantation colonies of German East Africa and Cameroon.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the continuity and transformation of exploitative labor practices in South African gold mining after slavery. It analyzes the coercion of African laborers, the recruitment of Chinese laborers under global capitalist pressures, and how labor systems justified inequality as reform.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the continuity and transformation of exploitative labor practices in South African gold mining, focusing on how legal frameworks and state policies justified these systems under the guise of efficiency and development. Following the abolition of slavery, colonial economies restructured labor systems to sustain capitalist extraction, compelling African laborers to work under conditions that perpetuated racial and economic hierarchies. These coercive systems evolved as mine owners, perceiving inefficiencies in African labor, turned to Chinese indentured laborers, a shift that not only reshaped labor practices but also reinforced racial hierarchies and systems of exclusion. This transition reflected broader global capitalist pressures to secure cheap, controllable labor for industrial and economic demands. By situating the recruitment of Chinese laborers within these local and global dynamics, the paper reveals how colonial economies adapted labor systems to maintain dominance in resource extraction while masking exploitation through reforms framed as progressive. It further examines how mechanisms developed to control Chinese laborers influenced subsequent policies affecting African laborers, illustrating the interconnectedness of global and local labor systems. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to understanding coerced labor within global racial capitalism, emphasizing how post-emancipation labor practices in South African mining exemplify the adaptation of colonial economies to global economic demands while perpetuating inequality under the pretense of reform.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the contested relationship between the International Labour Organization, colonial administrations, and organized labour in South/Southeast Asia during the late 1930s, using the example of Harold Butler, the ILO’s second Director-General.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the contested relationship between the International Labour Organization, colonial administrations, and organized labour in South/Southeast Asia during the late 1930s, using the example of Harold Butler, the ILO’s second Director-General. Butler’s 1937–1938 travels through Singapore, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and British and French India brought him into contact with diverse actors, including colonial officials, industrialists, and anti-colonial labour movements. At a time when the League of Nations, the ILO’s sister organization, faced growing international disrepute due to its failure to address geopolitical crises, Butler sought to reconcile the divergent interests of colonial governments, industrial stakeholders, and organised labour. His goal was to bolster the ILO’s legitimacy in Asia while gaining insights into the region’s accelerating industrialisation. Butler’s subsequent publication, Problems of Industry in the East, reflects his observations on the capitalist development and labor conditions in the region. Framing increased labor productivity as a prerequisite for integrating South and Southeast Asian workers into the global capitalist economy, Butler’s analysis reveals tensions between the ILO’s reformist rhetoric and its alignment with colonial and capitalist agendas. Drawing on Butler’s correspondence, local press reports, and his publication, this paper explores the interplay of commoning and uncommoning practices within colonial labor systems. It highlights how local labor dynamics both resisted and reinforced exploitative structures shaped by racialized exclusions. By situating Butler’s visit within the broader context of global racial capitalism, this study contributes to understanding the role of international organizations in perpetuating and contesting labor exploitation in the Global South.

Contribution short abstract:

This conference contribution discusses labor migration in Taiwan through the concept of racialized capitalism. I propose this perspective as a counter-narrative to scandalizing discourses on "modern slavery" and "forced labor," and I reflect on conceptualizing racialized capitalism in global space.

Contribution long abstract:

This conference contribution discusses the mobilization and control of Southeast Asian migrant workers to Taiwan through the concept of racialized capitalism. I propose this perspective as a counter-narrative to scandalizing discourses on “modern slavery” and “forced labor” in global production chains. While these discourses have gained traction in the past decade and also dominated debates around migrant labor in Taiwan, they tend to obfuscate migrants’ experiences of the everyday violence of their labor as well as their various struggles against their conditions. Drawing on two years of fieldwork with Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan’s manufacturing and fishing industries (2022-2024) and engaging with Taiwan’s thirty-year-old history of recruiting “low-skilled” temporary workers into dirty, difficult, and demeaning jobs, I argue that the racialization of Southeast Asian migrant workers is constitutive of Taiwan’s contemporary capitalist configuration. Taiwan’s migration regime produces a fragment of the working class split off from local workers with the effect of intensified exploitation and the division of workers’ struggles. My contribution outlines how the contemporary racialization of labor relations in Taiwan is embedded in earlier forms of segmenting the working classes throughout European, multiple Chinese, and Japanese colonizations of Taiwan. Thus, I attempt to contribute to discussions on racialized capitalisms in global space – varieties of racialized capitalism that are entangled with Europe’s colonial history but that also go beyond the Eurocentric framework. Furthermore, I consider how Southeast Asian migrant workers today confront their degradation and exploitation, thereby underscoring the contested nature of racialized capitalism.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines precarious informal labor in Tanzania where imports sustain livelihoods through distribution, not production. Using Ferguson’s “labor of distribution” and critiques of surplus labor under capitalism, it explores traders’ moral economies and political critiques.

Contribution long abstract:

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, some precarious informal street traders align with Joan Robinson’s observation that “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” (1962). However, surplus labor and coerced labor share a condition of exclusion from the legal rights and social inclusion promised by the “licit life of capitalism” (Appel 2019), while still being subsumed into capitalist accumulation. Although Tanzania’s industrialization remains unrealized, the influx of commodities from China sustains livelihoods through distribution rather than production. In the Kariakoo wholesale district, traders, agents, porters, and bureaucrats engineer licit and illicit value diversions via fees, wages, bribes, thefts, mark-ups, and profits. While wholesale traders may profit from supply chain control, small-scale informal traders face precarious capital accumulation, while most others just get by. This paper compares two lenses for understanding precarious informal labor. James Ferguson (2015) reimagines “labor” in the global South as the “labor of distribution,” emphasizing “rightful shares” of wealth-in-motion over production or value capture. A second critical perspective challenges the notion that the informal economy is “external” to capitalist accumulation (cf. Shivji 2009). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with traders and would-be-traders in Chinese commodities, I explore tensions between their entrepreneurial ethos and the moral economy of claims on the resources of others Additionally, I discuss traders’ critiques of the international division of labor, highlighting their perspectives on what has contributed to their precarious lives in an era when the promise of South-South capitalism has promised otherwise.

Contribution short abstract:

Ghana’s recent economic turmoil has exacerbated experiences of urban precarity among informal migrant workers and particularly challenged northern Ghanaian women’s translocal social security measures and long fought achievements of social mobility. How do migrant women experience and navigate this?

Contribution long abstract:

Since the early 1980s, women’s rural-urban migration from northern Ghana to the southern cities of Accra and Kumasi is common practice to sustain individual and household livelihoods. Due to a widespread lack of formal education and language skills, the majority is tied to informal job opportunities. The absence of a safe and secure working environment, of sufficient and stable income, and inadequate access to housing and health care foster precarious livelihoods. However, experiences of precarity are ambivalent. Over generations, it has contributed to women’s modest social mobility upon their return home. This achievement is increasingly at risk. Since 2022, Ghana, long considered a model state in West Africa, faces a severe economic crisis. Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, higher global interest rates and years of excessive borrowing have led to high rates of inflation, and primarily currency depreciation and higher food prices. While urban work opportunities have become scarce, income and its value has decreased drastically. Joint strategies and practices to ease implications of precarious labour, such as migrant women’s translocal informal social security measures, are increasingly under threat. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana between 2007 and 2024 I analyse the recent processes of urban precarity and their translocal impact on women’s social mobility in the region of origin. By highlighting the temporalities and spatialities of precarious migrant labour, I seek to show how migrant women navigate its ambivalences under increasingly challenging conditions of national and global economic turmoil.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper explores the labor exploitation practices by multinational firms operating in Ethiopia's garment industry, focusing on the intersection of global supply chains, local labor conditions, and the ethical challenges faced by workers.

Contribution long abstract:

Addis Ababa University

This paper explores the labor exploitation practices by multinational firms operating in Ethiopia's garment industry, focusing on the intersection of global supply chains, local labor conditions, and the ethical challenges faced by workers. The garment sector in Ethiopia has attracted foreign investment due to the country's low labor costs and favorable trade agreements. However, this growth has come at a significant social cost, with workers often subjected to poor wages, unsafe working conditions, and limited labor rights protections. Through a combination of field research, case studies, and analysis of industry reports, the paper examines how multinational companies in the garment sector are complicit in perpetuating exploitative labor practices. Additionally, the paper investigates the roles of both Ethiopian government policies and international organizations in addressing these issues, while considering the broader implications for workers' rights and corporate responsibility. Ultimately, this paper aims to highlight the challenges in balancing economic growth with ethical labor practices in global supply chains, offering recommendations for more equitable frameworks in multinational corporate operations.

Keywords: labor exploitation, multinational firms, garment industry, Ethiopia, global supply chains, workers' rights,

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation highlights how the Human Trafficking framework perpetuates the coercive labour exploitation of marginalised groups. We argue that, by focusing on individual perpetrators, the framework overlooks the regulations and structures that enable employers to exploit these groups.

Contribution long abstract:

The primary tool in the global response to the persistent problem of coercive labour exploitation over the past two decades is the Human Trafficking legal framework, following the adoption of the United Nations Palermo Protocol in 2000. However, critical literature on the Human Trafficking framework highlights that it has produced racialised, classed, and gendered representations of perpetrators and victims, who then become the targets of surveillance, prosecution, and often unsolicited rescue missions designed to combat Human Trafficking. Our aim in this presentation is to illustrate how the Human Trafficking framework perpetuates the structural and institutional conditions that enable the coercive labour exploitation of historically marginalised groups, including women and those in economically precarious situations. Notably, the Human Trafficking framework pays more attention to individual acts that lure and subject people to coercive labour arrangements, while overlooking or doing little to address the regulations and formal structures that permit employers and industries to exploit marginalised groups through coercive labour practices. This presentation focuses on Cameroonians in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states and the anti-Human Trafficking campaigns in Cameroon. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cameroon and the United Arab Emirates between 2015 and 2024, exploring the trafficking of Cameroonian nationals.