United States: Precariousness of Work and Super-Exploitation of the Labor Force

Unpacking Super-Exploitation in the 21st Century: The Struggles of Haitian Workers in Brazil

“…Following developmentalist logic, increasing technology and labour productivity in the Global South (inter alia Brazil) would end conditions for super-exploitation. Instead, the intensified competition inherent in the global economy and south-north commodity flows have motivated local elites to continuously attract foreign capital and super-exploitation has expanded (Osorio, 2013;Selwyn, 2020;Valencia, 2015). An equally important aspect to a distinctive super-exploitation in the periphery is how this economically motivated organisation between local elites and foreign capital is manifested in social relations of production (Marini, 1973); specifically colonial legacies of racism (Latimer, 2016;Mbembe, 2019), patriarchy (Pinango et al, 2021), class inequality and the absence of social welfare states (Garvey and Stewart, 2015) common to the industrial core countries.…”

“…As the contradictions in contemporary globalised capitalism become increasingly apparent through myriad crises, Marini's original analysis (Marini, 1973) helps explain the progressive integration of developing countries into global markets, but in a manner that retains or indeed deepens core-peripheral hierarchies with implications for labour value and conditions. Economic integration is frequently characterised by relatively strong economic growth together with the persistence, or indeed, further deterioration of, appalling working conditions (Valencia, 2015). Given that migration restrictions in 'core' countries are contributing to an increasing volume of low-paid labour in regions of the Global South (Smith, 2016), and are increasingly confining migration to within-Global South trajectories, the theorisation of super-exploitation requires revisiting.…”