Exploitation of international migrant workers in the Global North has been increasingly framed in terms of trafficking, in political and legal domains and by the media. Yet posing trafficking as a ...phenomenon that captures the unfreedom experienced by migrants obscures the variegated means through which unfree labour relations are both institutionalized, and related to more ‘mundane’ forms of exploitation including precarious employment (for migrants and non-migrants alike). In this paper we argue that conceptualizing forms of unfreedom along a continuum of labour relations highlights this interrelationship, which for migrant workers includes attempts to harness and control mobilities through immigration regimes that restrict mobility bargaining power within labour markets. We use the example of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in Canada to show how precarious employment, precarious legal status and unfree labour relations interact, and how they are negotiated and contested by of workers themselves.
► I examine the case of slave labour among migrant Brazilian sugar cane workers. ► I use the GPN framework to place unfree labour within production networks. ► I show how labour is de-valued within a ...GPN through processes of racialisation. ► I show how beyond institutional context, the state exercises governance within GPNs. ► I show how efforts to combat slave labour work through GPN power dynamics.
This article presents an analysis of slave labour (as it is known in Brazil) among sugar cane workers within a globalising production network. It employs the Global Production Network (GPN) framework to argue that the dynamics of production networks are fundamental to the reproduction of unfree and degrading labour in this case. First, the power exercised by buyers is a key aspect of processes resulting in slave labour. Conversely, efforts to combat slave labour have been strengthened by acknowledging and working through this power. Second, the state exercises governance within the production network rather than only providing its institutional context. Beyond these dynamics, however, wider processes are involved in making labour available on particular terms and conditions. Third, then, processes of racialisation facilitate the imposition of restrictions on workers’ mobility, degrading conditions and intensification of work. Labour is, in other words, devalued. This implies that the ways in which competing judgments over value are resolved merit as much attention in GPN analysis as is currently given to the creation, enhancement and capture of value.
Trafficking, forced labour and ‘slavery’ (TFLS) have become a central cause for our time, but anti-TFLS efforts have also come under forceful criticism. Amidst these ongoing debates, we observe that ...TFLS is currently being reframed as a problem of and for development. We consider the implications of this reframing by first reviewing the tangled history of abolitionism, colonialism and development, linking this to critical understandings of development more broadly. We then utilise Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to study the methodological assumptions and discursive framing of (anti-)TFLS in two paradigmatic texts. In doing so, we trace an important discursive shift – to anti-TFLS as development – in the moment it unfolds. Troubling the narrative of anti-TFLS as development, we conclude that while it promises to amend the criminal justice approach, it nevertheless perpetuates a global politics of rescue.
This article examines the concept of slave labour through two case studies from Brazil. One involves internal migrant workers and the other cross‐border migrant workers. There have been accusations ...of slave labour in both cases. I argue that slave labour is a multi‐dimensional concept and that cognate notions (eg forced and unfree labour) could also be reconceived as multi‐dimensional. Recent works have proposed that a continuum viewing labour relations as more or less free should replace dichotomies such as free vs unfree. I argue for taking this further to recognise, first, that workers may be more or less free in different ways, and second, that the resulting conditions of employment can be characterised as more or less degrading, also in different ways. This multi‐dimensional approach allows for a better understanding of the heterogeneity of apparently unfree labour relations and for greater recognition of the agency of workers labelled as slaves.
The Fair Food Program (FFP) provides a mechanism through which agricultural workers’ collective voice is expressed, heard and responded to within global value chains. The FFP's model of worker‐driven ...social responsibility presents an alternative to traditional corporate social responsibility. This article identifies the FFP's key components and demonstrates its resilience by identifying the ways in which the issues faced by a new group of migrant workers – recruited through a “guest‐worker” scheme – were incorporated and dealt with. This case study highlights the important potential presented by the programme to address labour abuses across transnationalized labour markets while considering early replication possibilities.
In this article, two cases of paid social reproductive labour performed in the home in New York City are examined: subsidized child care and paid domestic work. Particular attention is paid to the ...organization of the industries and the experiences of employees in those worksites. It is demonstrated that there continues to be a persistent and wilful exclusion of this work from regulation, as well as systematic violations of those regulations which do govern the work, constituting what the authors term 'unregulated work'. It should be noted that the workers paid by the government are not exempt from this finding, but fit very clearly into this larger pattern. This illustrates the problems which arise from the process of transforming domestic spaces, and communities more broadly, into spaces of wage labour in American cities. It further serves as a powerful re-assertion of the denial of the value of 'women's work'.
Bacterial species of the genera Agrobacterium and Borrelia possess chromosomes terminated by hairpin telomeres. Replication produces dimeric replication intermediates fused via replicated telomere ...junctions. A specialized class of enzymes, referred to as telomere resolvases, promotes the resolution of the replicated intermediate into linear monomers terminated by hairpin telomeres. Telomere resolution is catalyzed via DNA cleavage and rejoining events mechanistically similar to those promoted by topoisomerase-IB and tyrosine recombinase enzymes. Examination of the borrelial telomere resolvase, ResT, revealed unanticipated multifunctionality; aside from its expected telomere resolution activity ResT possessed a singled-stranded DNA (ssDNA) annealing activity that extended to both naked ssDNA and ssDNA complexed with its cognate single-stranded DNA binding protein (SSB). At present, the role this DNA annealing activity plays in vivo remains unknown. We have demonstrated here that single-stranded DNA annealing is also a conserved property of the agrobacterial telomere resolvase, TelA. This activity in TelA similarly extends to both naked ssDNA and ssDNA bound by its cognate SSB. TelA's annealing activity was shown to stem from the N-terminal domain; removal of this domain abolished annealing without affecting telomere resolution. Further, independent expression of the N-terminal domain of TelA produced a functional annealing protein. We suggest that the apparent conservation of annealing activity in two telomere resolvases, from distantly related bacterial species, implies a role for this activity in hairpin telomere metabolism. Our demonstration of the separation of the telomere resolution and annealing activities of TelA provides a platform for future experiments aimed at identifying the role DNA annealing performs in vivo.
The telomere resolvase, TelA, forms the hairpin telomeres of the linear chromosome of Agrobacterium tumefaciens in a process referred to as telomere resolution. Telomere resolution is a unique DNA ...cleavage and rejoining reaction that resolves replicated telomere junctions into a pair of hairpin telomeres. Telomere resolvases utilize a reaction mechanism with similarities to that of topoisomerase-IB enzymes and tyrosine recombinases. The reaction proceeds without the need for high-energy cofactors due to the use of a covalent, enzyme-cleaved DNA intermediate that stores the bond energy of the cleaved bonds in 3'-phosphotyrosyl linkages. The cleaved DNA strands are then refolded into a hairpin conformation and the 5'-OH ends of the refolded strands attack the 3'-phosphotyrosine linkages in order to rejoin the DNA strands into hairpin telomeres. Because this kind of reaction mechanism is, in principle, reversible it is unclear how TelA controls the direction of the reaction and propels the reaction to completion. We present evidence that TelA forms and/or stabilizes a pre-cleavage intermediate that features breakage of the four central basepairs between the scissile phosphates prior to DNA cleavage to help propel the reaction forwards, thus preventing abortive cleavage and rejoining cycles that regenerate the substrate DNA. We identify eight TelA sidechains, located in the hairpin-binding module and catalytic domains of TelA, implicated in this process. These mutants were deficient for telomere resolution on parental replicated telomere junctions but were rescued by introduction of substrate modifications that mimic unwinding of the DNA between the scissile phosphates.
Linear replicons can be found in a minority of prokaryotic organisms, including Borrelia species and Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The problem with replicating the lagging strand end of linear DNAs is ...circumvented in these organisms by the presence of covalently closed DNA hairpin telomeres at the DNA termini. Telomere resolvases are enzymes responsible for generating these hairpin telomeres from a dimeric replication intermediate through a two-step DNA cleavage and rejoining reaction referred to as telomere resolution. It was previously shown that the agrobacterial telomere resolvase, TelA, possesses ssDNA annealing activity in addition to telomere resolution activity. The annealing activity derives, chiefly, from the N-terminal domain. This domain is dispensable for telomere resolution. In this study, we used activity analyses of an N-terminal domain deletion mutant, domain add back experiments, and protein–protein interaction studies and we report that the N-terminal domain of TelA is involved in inhibitory interactions with the remainder of TelA that are relieved by the binding of divalent metal ions. We also found that the regulation of telomere resolution by the N-terminal domain of TelA extends to suppression of inappropriate enzymatic activity, including hairpin telomere fusion (reaction reversal) and recombination between replicated telomeres to form a Holliday junction.
PDF
