Chinese entrepreneurs and workers at the crossroad: the role of social networks in ethnic industrial clusters in Italy

PurposeThis paper aims to analyse the evolution of Chinese industrial ethnic clusters in Italy, by focusing on the role of social networks and the processes behind the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur “self-exploitation”.Design/methodology/approachThe case study is a sub-cluster of micro and small enterprises owned by Chinese entrepreneurs within the leather industrial district of Florence, Italy. This research adopts the following mixed methods: a small-scale survey to capture the characteristics of the sub-cluster and a social network analysis to describe cluster evolution, complemented by life-course interviews conducted with key informants and entrepreneurs.FindingsMigrant social capital and social networks play a central role in the evolution of the case study sub-cluster. Social networks play a supportive role in migration, job creation, entrepreneurship formation and the creation of business opportunities. Simultaneously, they enhance the phenomenon of worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation. Furthermore, the more the business community grows, the more the economic performance of ethnic enterprises depends on agglomeration forces produced by the cluster.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest a series of potential policies to upgrade the ethnic enterprises' capacities, to increase their formality and inclusion in the Italian social and economic systems and sub-cluster.Originality/valueTo the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to examine the evolution of social networks in relation to the phenomenon of Chinese worker exploitation and entrepreneur self-exploitation in an ethnic industrial sub-cluster.

Between Violence, Racism and Reform: São Tomé e Príncipe in the Great Depression Years (1930–1937)

The effects of the Great Depression on the important cocoa plantation sector of the archipelago of São Tomé e Príncipe – a Portuguese colonial laboratory for social change in plantation agriculture shifting between coercive practices and attempts at accommodation – were drastic: initially backed by a right-wing authoritarian government, plantation managements lowered workers’ wages and made already repressive conditions of worker exploitation worse. This article highlights the processes of degradation in plantation workers' life. However, in ways that might seem paradox at first glance, the crisis years of the 1930s also opened the ways to changes in social experiences in the plantations. Labour inspectors were increasingly called upon to scrutinize existing abuses on the plantations, and although this might have been in the first phase simply lip service to certain international debates on good standards in colonialism, inspectors internalized the need for reform and turned out to be critical observers. At the same time, the workers expanded their repertoire of responses – from individual resistance to ever better-organized escape strategies and the manipulation of offers of settlement schemes for small groups of workers. By 1937, these trends were important precursors to changes that would achieve their full impact in the 1950s.

Slaves to Technology: Worker control in the surveillance economy

Technology is enabling new forms of coercion and control over workers. While digital platforms for labour markets have been seen as benign or neutral technology, in reality they may enable new forms of worker exploitation. Workers in precarious conditions who seek employment via digital platforms are highly vulnerable to coercion and control via forms of algorithmic manipulation. This manipulation is enabled by information asymmetries, lack of labour protection, and predatory business models. When put together, these deficits create a perfect storm for labour exploitation. This article describes how digital platforms alter traditional labour relations, summarises case data from several existing studies, and details emerging forms of worker control and barriers to worker agency. It explores current definitions of forced labour and whether digital spaces require us to consider a new conceptualisation of what constitutes force, fraud, and coercion. It concludes with a summary of possible responses to these new forms of abuse in the global economy, including alternative models for business and for worker organising.

‘The Bullock Report and European Experience’: What We Can Still Learn about Worker Directors from Hugh Clegg

Hugh Clegg’s paper, ‘The Bullock Report and European Experience’, written in 1977, analyses the role of worker directors appointed to the boards of UK companies, a move which formed part of the then Labour government’s Social Contract with the trade unions designed to stem the country’s long-term industrial decline. My commentary argues that three aspects of the paper are likely to strike the contemporary reader most forcibly. Initially it seems alien as it describes a world of collectivist industrial relations that was erased by the Conservative government elected in 1979. Yet on closer reading its main theme - reforming corporate accountability - emerges as all too familiar, as worker exploitation and other corporate scandals have continued largely unchecked to the present. And we may reflect that more recent research into policy transfer has improved our contemporary understanding of the barriers to corporate governance reform since the 1970s. Clegg correctly cautioned against attempting to import institutions from countries such as Germany into the UK, a view that has since been refined by analysis of the contrasts between co-ordinated and liberal market economies. Reforming corporate governance requires tailor-made policies, not those transferred merely on grounds of success in their original host countries.

Time and Global Capitalism

This article cross-relates four epistemes of time (epochality, time reckoning, temporality, and coevalness) with four materializations of time (hegemony, conflict, crisis, and rupture). Understanding the terms within this framework allows us to depict global capitalism as epochally distinctive, riven by time conflicts, prone to recurring financial crises, and vulnerable to collective opposition. Time conflicts materialize across the areas of financialization and capital realization, worker exploitation and transnational supply chains, and the political economies of national and transnational state governance. Initially, these critical insights about the historicity and instability of global capitalism were obscured by the perpetual now-ness of corporate brand culture, 24/7 global television, and digital communication networks. Worldwide structural exclusions of the poor and their experiences of time were also obscured, a process the article defines as a “denial of coevalness.” With the 2008 financial crisis, the time conflicts of financialized capitalism became obviously unmanageable. National and transnational attempts to resolve the crisis simply reproduced the time conflicts of financialization. And structural exclusions of the global poor were further entrenched. However, these developments triggered a confluence of occupation movements, riots, protests, strike activity, and anti-austerity activism, raising the prospect of a sustained collective challenge to global capitalism.

Consuming Worker Exploitation? Accounts and Justifications for Consumer (In)action to Modern Slavery

While research has examined the plight of vulnerable workers, the role of consumers who drive demand for slave-based services and products has been largely neglected. This is an important gap given both historical evidence of the effectiveness of 18th and 19th century anti-slavery consumer activism and recent attempts to regulate slavery through harnessing consumer power, such as the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. This article draws on data from in-depth interviews with 40 consumers, to identify their understanding of modern slavery, before revealing the neutralising and legitimising techniques they use to justify their (in)action. Our findings contribute to, and extend, neutralisation theory by exploring its applicability in this unique context. We also position techniques of legitimisation as central to understanding how modern slavery is tolerated through a variety of discursive and institutional factors.