Introduction

Linden, Marcel van der; Garcia, Magaly Rodriguez

doi:10.1163/9789004316386_002

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“…The term that is most often used to denote such labour relationships is unfree labour (Andrijasevic and Novitz, 2020; Banaji, 2010; Barrientos, 2013; Barrientos et al, 2013; Brass, 1999, 2011, 2017; Frantz, 2013; Fudge, 2018; Gore and LeBaron, 2019; Kothari, 2013; LeBaron, 2015; LeBaron and Phillips, 2019; Lerche, 2007; Morgan and Olsen, 2014; Strauss and McGrath, 2017; Rioux et al, 2020; LeBaron and Phillips, 2019). Other terms such as neo-bondage (Breman, 1996; Mezzadri, 2017), modern/new/contemporary slavery (Bales, 2012; International Labour Organization (ILO), 2017; McGrath, 2013a, 2013b; Miers, 2000), bonded labour (Damir-Geilsdorf, 2016; Srivastava, 2005) or forced/coerced labour (Allamby et al, 2011; ILO, 2017; Lerche, 2007; Phillips, 2013; Phillips and Mieres, 2014; Strauss, 2012; Van der Linden and Rodríguez García, 2016; Verité, 2014) are less frequently used. The main reason the term unfree labour is so widely used is the fact that slavery and forced labour are legal categories.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfree Wage Labour

Breznik

2023

Critical Sociology

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The article develops the concept of ‘unfree wage labour’ that refers to a situation in which a worker must (temporarily and conditionally) give away possession of his labour power to a third party who then sells it to the buyers of labour power. From the perspective of contract freedom and legal equality, it seems irrelevant whether a worker sells his or her labour power to an employer or to an intermediary. However, there is no doubt that labour intermediation increases the economic dependence and social subordination of workers. First, given that the intermediary negotiates with the employer, the worker has a lower ability to influence the terms of employment. Second, given that he or she is a contract worker, they have a lower ability to engage in collective action in the company. Undoubtedly, this worker has significantly lower control over her or his working and living conditions. The question arises whether his or her contract freedom lessened to the extent that we can speak of unfree wage labour.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unfree Wage Labour

Breznik

2023

Critical Sociology

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“…There is an unmissable irony here. Privileging empiricism over theory, elsewhere van der Linden (2016) asserted that it was necessary to look at all the empirical evidence – ‘all forms of coerced labour’ – in minute detail (for a modified version of the same argument, see van der Linden, 2023: 84ff.). However, in the end he was compelled to concede that attempting to identify multiple variants always returned to a basic dichotomy – the free/unfree distinction – long known about and underlying the many forms composing his taxonomies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Last Rites for Development Studies?

Brass

2023

Critical Sociology

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Introduction: Dismantling DevelopmentDenial of development-as-modernity, a process leading ultimately to a socialist transition, which argues for the further systemic transformation of a progressive and non-exploitative kind, takes many forms by those who study this. Such denial can -and does -lead to an epistemological cul-de-sac, whereby the very possibility of systemic development is itself seen as impossible, since no one is certain any longer as to what the current mode -capitalism -is, let alone how it can be transcended, or, indeed, what social categories might have an interest in accomplishing this task. Central to these sorts of argument is what might be termed the nothing-to-see-here view, a mainstream position in development studies which insists there is little or nothing problematic with the current system: one variant of this holds that what exists cannot be improved upon or transcended (because systemically it is historically eternal); another clings to the present, insisting that anyway there are no feasible alternatives, while yet others seek replacements that lie in the past, not the future.The kind of process referred to here, it must be stressed, is not micro-level but macro-level development. Discussion about and advocacy of micro-level development, it is true, does continue apace in the relevant academic journals, concerned as these are with issues such as the provision of clean water and improved health care for impoverished rural populations. However, debate about fundamental systemic change in the form of macro-level grand theory has seemingly ground to a halt, and with it any consideration of a future that is not in some way still a form of capitalism. This is due in part to a combination of factors: the influence of postmodern aporia and the rise of populism; the banishment of concepts such as modernity, in particular Marxist theory about the desirability and possibility of systemic development. 1 Accordingly, much current mainstream discussion about development tends to be empiricist, focussing on a specific issue regarded as problematic, solutions to which entail no more than piecemeal change in or amelioration of what exists at present. 2 No challenge is made to capitalism as a system, therefore, and consequently socialism is not considered as a desirable/feasible prospect. Since in this discourse about development-as-modernity capitalism does not feature as a problem, how to go beyond it in terms of theory and practice does not arise, and consequently is not addressed.

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Introduction: labor coercion, labor control, and workers’ agency

Müller

2019

Labor History

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Introduction

Cited by 4 publications

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Unfree Wage Labour

Unfree Wage Labour

Last Rites for Development Studies?

Introduction: labor coercion, labor control, and workers’ agency

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