Work, Inequalities and Sustainability in Global Value Chains

This seminar looks at global value chains and their links to sustainability issues, labour migration, and gender relations. It addresses these issues mainly from a work research approach. How is work organized, and gendered, in value chains across borders? Who benefits from them, and at whose expense? What do they imply for peoples’ working conditions?

In the theoretical part of the course, important terms and concepts will be discussed. Core terms like value chains, commodity chains and care chains will be clarified. Furthermore, we will look at concepts of social inequality, social sustainability, and sustainable work. What is work, how can we define it, and what does it have to do with sustainability? Which alternative models of work have been suggested in research on sustainability, and in feminist theory?  

The second part of the course illustrates the topic with selected empirical examples. They will be taken primarily from the fields of care work, service work, and food production. As such, we will read and discuss empirical studies on, among other things, work in global care chains, work in the meat industry, and work in harvest help. A special focus will be set on the question what happened to these areas of work during the corona pandemic, or, in some cases, what the pandemic made more visible about them.

The course builds on the theoretical perspectives taught in the course “Gender, Environment and Sustainability: Theory and Debates” by Meike Brückner.