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  3. Development Trajectories in Global Value Chains

A key feature of the current phase of globalization is outsourcing and coordination of production by lead buyers, largely to developing country producers, with the splintering of production by tasks across countries. This process began with manufacturing but then spread to tradable services, such as IT and agri-food processing. This phenomenon of geographically dispersed production is variously labelled as Global Value Chains (GVCs). This series focusses on developmental contours within and around GVCs.

  • Editorial Boards: Stephanie Barrientos, University of Manchester, Gary Gereffi, Duke University, North Carolina, Dev Nathan, Institute for Human Development, New Delhi and Duke University, North Carolina, John Pickles, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Jennifer Bair, University of Virginia, Valentina De Marchi, University of Padova, Italy, Joonkoo Lee, Hanyang University, South Korea, Shengjun Zhu, Peking University, China

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14 results in Development Trajectories in Global Value Chains

Fields of Glass
  • Labour Regimes, Techno-Science and Biopolitics in Agrifood Value Chains
  • Adrian Smith
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • What is the relationship between technology and labour regimes in agrifood value chains? By deploying the concept of agrarian biopolitical articulations, Field of Glass formulates new perspectives that bridge the hitherto distinct worlds of value chain research, agrarian political economy, labour regime theory, and agrarian techno-science to explain the enduring insecurity of food systems in the United Kingdom. Using both historical and contemporary research, Adrian Smith explores how the precarity and exploitation of migrant labour intersects with ecology and techno-science/innovation, such as hydroponic and robotic technologies, to explain the development and changing nature of glasshouse agrifood value chains in the UK. Smith concludes by reflecting on how agrarian bio-politics have shaped the glasshouse agrifood sector and the emergence of contemporary 'high road' and 'low road' strategies, highlighting their contradictions and negative consequences for local development and food supply security.

Modern Slavery and the Governance of Global Value Chains
  • Edited by Hila Shamir, Bimal Arora, Shilpi Banerjee, Tamar Barkay
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • Modern Slavery and the Governance of Global Value Chains provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the links between Global Value Chains (GVCs) governance, regulation, and vulnerability to severe forms of labour market exploitation by focusing on governance initiatives that seek to induce corporate action to end or mitigate modern slavery. The book brings together chapters by scholars from developed, developing, and emerging economies and from various disciplines to explore the complex relationship between global and local patterns of production and consumption, and severe forms of labour market exploitation. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Europe's Auto Industry
  • Global Production Networks and Spatial Change
  • Petr Pavlínek
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2025
    Print publication:
    23 January 2025
  • Drawing on the analytical approaches of global production networks, global value chains, and spatial divisions of labor, this book investigates the changing automotive industry in Europe. Petr Pavlínek is a leading scholar of the automotive industry and here he focuses on its restructuring and geographic reorganization since the early 1990s to analyze the driving forces and regional development effects of these changes. Pavlínek explains the spatial profit-seeking strategies of large automotive firms and their role in the restructuring and increasing internationalization of Europe's automotive industry through foreign direct investment. He also considers how rapid growth in eastern Europe has affected western Europe, evaluates the relative position of countries in the European automotive industry, and examines the transition to the production of electric vehicles in eastern Europe. Europe's Auto Industry features original data along with concepts and methods that may be applied in economic geography, economics, industrial sociology and development studies.

Television in the Streaming Era
  • The Global Shift
  • Jean Chalaby
  • Published online:
    30 March 2023
    Print publication:
    06 April 2023
  • This ground-breaking study explores transformations in the TV industry under the impact of globalizing forces and digital technologies. Chalaby investigates the making of a digital value chain and the distinct value-adding segments which form the new video ecosystem. He provides a full account of the industry's global shift from the development of TV formats and transnational networks to the emergence of tech giants and streaming platforms. The author takes a deep dive into the infrastructure (communication satellites, subsea cable networks, data centres) and technology (cloud computing, machine learning and artificial intelligence) underpinning this ecosystem through the prism of global value chain theory. The book combines empirical data garnered over 20 years of researching the industry and offers unique insights from television and tech executives.

Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism
  • Gender, Labour, and Environmental Injustice in Garment Value Chains
  • Dev Nathan, Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, S. Rahul, Purushottam Kumar, Immanuel Dahagani, Sukhpal Singh, Padmini Swaminathan
  • Published online:
    21 January 2022
    Print publication:
    26 May 2022
  • This book provides a firm analytical base to discussions about injustice and the unequal distribution of gains from global production in the form of global monopsony capitalism. It utilizes the concept of reverse subsidies as the purchase of gendered labour and environmental services below their costs of production in garment value chains in India and other garment producing countries, such as Bangladesh and Cambodia. Environmental services, such as freshwater for garment manufacture and land for cotton production, are degraded by overuse and untreated waste disposal. The resulting higher profits from the low prices of garments are captured by global brands, using their monopsony position, with few buyers and myriad sellers, in the market. This book links the concept of reverse subsidies with those of injustice, inequality and sustainability in global production.

At the Margins of the Global Market
  • Making Commodities, Workers, and Crisis in Rural Colombia
  • Phillip A. Hough
  • Published online:
    07 January 2022
    Print publication:
    27 January 2022
  • Contemporary scholars debate the factors driving despotic labour conditions across the world economy. Some emphasize the dominance of global market imperatives and others highlight the market's reliance upon extra-economic coercion and state violence. At the Margins of the Global Market engages in this debate through a comparative and world-historical analysis of the labour regimes of three global commodity-producing subregions of rural Colombia: the coffee region of Viejo Caldas, the banana region of Urabá, and the coca/cocaine region of the Caguán. By drawing upon insights from labour regimes, global commodity chains, and world historical sociology, this book offers a novel understanding of the broad range of factors - local, national, global, and interregional - that shape labour conditions on the ground in Colombia. In doing so, it offers a critical new framework for analysing labour and development dynamics that exist at the margins of the global market.

Monopsony Capitalism
  • Power and Production in the Twilight of the Sweatshop Age
  • Ashok Kumar
  • Published online:
    15 January 2020
    Print publication:
    29 October 2020
  • This book explores the combination of capital's changing composition and labour's subjective agency to examine whether the waning days of the 'sweatshop' have indeed begun. Focused on the garment and footwear sectors, it introduces a universal logic that governs competition and reshapes the chain. By analysing workers' collective action at various sites of production, it observes how this internal logic plays out for labour who are testing the limits of the social order, stretching it until the seams show. By examining the most valorised parts of underdeveloped sectors, one can see where capital is going and how it is getting there. These findings contribute to ongoing efforts to establish workers' rights in sectors plagued by poverty and powerlessness, building fires and collapses. With this change and a capable labour movement, there's hope yet that workers may close the gap.

Gender and Work in Global Value Chains
  • Capturing the Gains?
  • Stephanie Barrientos
  • Published online:
    26 April 2019
    Print publication:
    23 May 2019
  • This book focuses on the changing gender patterns of work in a global retail environment associated with the rise of contemporary retail and global sourcing. This has affected the working lives of hundreds of millions of workers in high-, middle- and low-income countries. The growth of contemporary retail has been driven by the commercialised production of many goods previously produced unpaid by women within the home. Sourcing is now largely undertaken through global value chains in low- or middle-income economies, using a 'cheap' feminised labour force to produce low-price goods. As women have been drawn into the labour force, households are increasingly dependent on the purchase of food and consumer goods, blurring the boundaries between paid and unpaid work. This book examines how gendered patterns of work have changed and explores the extent to which global retail opens up new channels to leverage more gender-equitable gains in sourcing countries.

Global Value Chains and Development
  • Redefining the Contours of 21st Century Capitalism
  • Gary Gereffi
  • Published online:
    09 November 2018
    Print publication:
    10 September 2018
  • Globalization has transformed how nations, firms and workers compete in the international economy over the past half century. This book by Gary Gereffi, one of the founders of the global value chains (GVC) framework, traces the emergence of arguably the most influential approach used to analyze globalization and its impacts. It studies the conceptual foundations of GVC analysis, the twin pillars of 'governance' and 'upgrading', along with detailed case studies of China, Mexico and other emerging economies as main beneficiaries of export-oriented industrialization, and addresses potential solutions to the deleterious impact of globalization on workers and communities.

Development with Global Value Chains
  • Upgrading and Innovation in Asia
  • Edited by Dev Nathan, Meenu Tewari, Sandip Sarkar
  • Published online:
    01 November 2018
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019
  • Can firms and economies utilize global value chains for development? How can they move from low-income to middle-income and even high-income status? This book addresses these questions through a series of case studies examining upgradation and innovation by firms operating in GVCs in Asia. The countries examined are China, India, South Korea, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, with studies of firms operating in varied sectors - aerospace components, apparel, automotive, consumer electronics including mobile phones, telecom equipment, IT software and services, and pharmaceuticals.

Making Cars in the New India
  • Industry, Precarity and Informality
  • Tom Barnes
  • Published online:
    23 October 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2018
  • Auto manufacturing holds the promise of employing many young Indians in relatively well-paid, high-skill employment, but this promise is threatened by the industry's role as a site of immense conflict in recent years. This book asks: how do we explain this conflict? What are the implications of conflict for the ambitious economic development agendas of Indian governments? Based upon extensive field research in India's National Capital Region, this book is the first to focus on labour relations in the Indian auto industry. It proposes the theory that conflict in the auto industry has been driven by twin forces: first, the intersection of global networks of auto manufacturing with regional social structures which have always relied on informal and precariously-employed workers; and, second, the systematic displacement of securely-employed 'regular workers' by waves of precariously-employed 'de facto informal workers'.

The Intangible Economy
  • How Services Shape Global Production and Consumption
  • Edited by Deborah K. Elms, Arian Hassani, Patrick Low
  • Published online:
    19 October 2018
    Print publication:
    28 March 2017
  • The Intangible Economy: How Services Shape Global Production and Consumption studies aspects of the role of services in development as well as on particular sectoral issues, always with policy considerations lurking not far from the analysis. The volume highlights the evolution and significance of services in the global economy, including as a vehicle for development. It discusses the major pillars that hold the services infrastructure together, namely, its governance and financing mechanisms. Other chapters adopt more specific geographical or sectoral perspectives, including a regional study of the impact of services in economic integration in ASEAN; a country-level analysis of the role of services in economic and social upgrading in India; a look at industry-specific dynamics through the business process outsourcing model; and finally, a value chain view to understand how services are impacted on a granular or micro level by policies.

The Sweatshop Regime
  • Labouring Bodies, Exploitation, and Garments Made in India
  • Alessandra Mezzadri
  • Published online:
    23 July 2017
    Print publication:
    15 September 2016
  • This book explores the processes producing and reproducing the garment sweatshop in India. Drawing from Marxian and feminist insights, the book theorises the garment sweatshop in India as a complex 'regime' of exploitation and oppression, jointly crafted by global, regional and local actors, composed of factory and non-factory settings, and working across productive and reproductive realms. The analysis shows the tight correspondence between the physical and social materiality of garment production in India; illustrates the great social differentiation and complex patterns of labour unfreedom at work in the industry; and depicts the sweatshop as a composite 'joint enterprise' against the labouring body, which is inexorably depleted and consumed by garment work, even in the absence of major industrial disasters. By placing labour at the centre of the analysis of processes of development and globalisation, the book critically engages with key debates on industrial modernity, modern slavery, and ethical consumerism.

Labour in Global Value Chains in Asia
  • Edited by Dev Nathan, Meenu Tewari, Sandip Sarkar
  • Published online:
    23 July 2017
    Print publication:
    11 July 2016
  • This book brings together a set of studies on labour conditions in global value chains (GVCs) in a variety of sectors, ranging from labour-intensive sectors (garments, fresh fruits, tourism), to medium and high technology sectors (automobiles, electronics and telecom) and knowledge-intensive sectors (IT software services). The studies span a number of countries across Asia - Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. This book stands out for its grounded and detailed examination of both what is working and what is not working as Asian labour gets more embedded in global value chains. In trying to identify spaces for progressive action and policies in the current GVC-linked global work environment, the book goes against the grain in searching for an alternative to laissez faire forms of globalisation.