The politic of sweatshop labour

This paper provides a political account of sweatshop labour by highlighting the role of political actors in establishing and sustaining exploitative working conditions in global sweatshops. In academic debates on sweatshop labour, the focus has been mostly on the responsibility of business or consumers (cf. Arnold & Bowie, 2007; Meyers, 2007; Zoller, 2015), although there are some authors who deal with the role of trade unions and civil society (cf. Kabeer, 2000). To provide a broader picture, I draw on the differentiation between extractive and inclusive institutions made by development economists Acemoglu and Robinson (2013) and apply this account to the sweatshop issue. I argue that sweatshops are a political rather than an economic problem, and substantiate my claim by drawing on the Chinese household registration system hukou, and the political background conditions in Bangladesh