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Paper short abstract:

I will argue for attention to dignity in the workplace by considering Indian garment workers’ perspectives on respect. The paper will show how a concern for worker dignity informs key framings of labour (un)freedom yet also moves beyond them, with implications for both policy and academic debates.

Paper long abstract:

Whilst concerns about worker freedom and unfreedom feature in debates across a range of disciplines (Barrientos, Kothari and Phillips 2013; Le Baron 2015; Crane et al 2022) and find expression, albeit imperfectly, in policy (ILO Forced Labour Convention 1930 [No. 29], UK Modern Slavery Act 2015), worker dignity is less frequently emphasised. This paper will situate an exploration of worker dignity in the context of articulations of (un)free labour in order to identify scope both for enriching these framings and for moving beyond them. In doing so, it will engage with perspectives of men and women garment and textile workers in factory and home-based settings in India’s National Capital Region.

The paper will make three principal moves. Firstly, it will take up the concept of respect as a relational aspect of dignity. Drawing on worker experiences of disrespectful labour relations in factories, the paper will bring this interpersonal conception of dignity into conversation with a view of dignity as inherent to human beings (Rao 2011 ).

Secondly, it will consider whether framings of freedom and unfreedom articulated by workers, and expressed in policy and academic discourse, presuppose a moral commitment to the intrinsic dignity of workers.

Thirdly, the paper will analyse implications of attention to worker dignity for debates on unfree labour and related policy work. In putting forward an enriched conception of unacceptable forms of work (ILO 2015) that integrates concerns for both freedom and dignity, it will address current policy advocacy around mandatory human rights due diligence.