The politics 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 labor, the focus has been mostly on the responsibility of business or consumers (cf. Arnold and Bowie 2007, Meyers 2007, Zoller 2015), albeit 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 will argue that sweatshops are a political rather than an economic issue, and substantiate my claim by drawing on the Chinese household registration system hukou, and the political background conditions in Bangladesh.