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Paper short abstract

Coauthored by Manchester colleagues from the Global Production Networks, Trade and Labour group, the paper conceptualises Southern agency in GPNs through adoption, leveraging, reshaping, and crafting, highlighting their engagement with increasingly fragmented trade and production regimes.

Paper long abstract

Debates on the reconfiguration of Global Production Networks (GPNs) are increasingly framed through the lens of US-China rivalry and great power competition. This focus sidelines the increasing and diverse forms of agency exercised by a range of actors across the global South. This paper seeks to conceptualise agency in the GPN approach. In the context of a shift away from a rule-based system towards fragmented, contested, and multi-layered trade and production regies, Southern actors are increasingly re-interpreting, challenging, and selectively engaging with multiple governance arrangements at once, often across scales, while also proposing and crafting alternatives. We argue that Southern agency cannot just be understood in terms of adaptation to structural shifts or as the strategic positioning within existing GPNs, but must instead be conceptualised as a set of situated and multi-scalar practices – adoption, leveraging, reshaping, and crafting – through which actors engage with GPNs in an era of global uncertainty. Drawing on the sectors of agriculture, production, trade, and the digital economy, the paper highlights both new spaces for Southern agency and the persistent constraints imposed by a hierarchical and uneven global economy.

The paper is co-authored by a group of Manchester colleagues part of the Global Production Networks, Trade and Labour group: Elisa Gambino, Rory Horner, Khalid Nadvi, Chris Foster, Matt Alford, Aarti Krishnan, Sophie Van Huellen, Gianluca Iazzolino, Jose Antonio Puppim de Oliveria, Diletta Pergoraro, Jose Camacho Caicedo, Nedson Ng’oma, Hairui Liu, Puji Basuki, and Anifat Ibrahim.