This blog was written by postgraduate student Âurea Mouzinho as an assessment for the module ‘Global Commodity Chains, Production Networks and Informal Work’, and selected for the blog by Dr Alessandra Mezzadri. Along the 22 kilometres that stretch between the iconic Largo da Independência in Luanda’s city centre and the special industrial zone in the district of Viana, the presence of informal street vendors is ubiquitous. On any given day,
This blog was written by postgraduate student Adam Charles Wilman as an assessment for the module ‘Global Commodity Chains, Production Networks and Informal Work’, and selected for the blog by Dr Alessandra Mezzadri. In the early 1900s American journalist Upton Sinclair published his exposé on the working conditions facing immigrant labour in American industrial cities. His grizzly illustrations were first published in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason in 1905
This blog was written by undergraduate student Maria Felicia Fahlin as an assessed piece of work for the module ‘Issues in global commodity chains, production networks and informal work’, and selected for the blog by Dr Alessandra Mezzadri. Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and super-star rapper Kanye West had their second child by surrogacy in May – a valuable testimonial for an industry that has come under increasing pressure in
This blog was written by undergraduate student Amy Rosetta Jose as an assessment for the module ‘Issues in global commodity chains, production networks and informal work’, and selected for the blog by Dr Alessandra Mezzadri. “I make school uniforms and can’t afford to send my daughter to school”. These are the words of a mother in Bangladesh, interviewed in The Mirror, who makes school uniforms for Tesco and Sainsbury’s for
This post is written by Anna Lindley, Senior Lecturer in Migration, Mobility and Development at SOAS. It was originally published as a guest post on the Border Criminologies blog based at the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. See the original post here. There is a burgeoning research literature critically mapping the spatial and temporal logics of immigration detention and how these systems are increasingly used to discipline and contain ‘unwanted’ mobile populations.
This post is written by Liam Campling, Cristóbal Kay, Jens Lerche, Bridget O’Laughlin, and Carlos Oya. It was originally published on Agrarian Questions, the website of the editors of the Journal of Agrarian Change. We are pleased to announce that Enric Tello, Gabriel Jover, Ivan Murray, Onofre Fullana and Ricard Soto have been awarded the 2018 Bernstein & Byres Prize for their article ‘From feudal colonization to agrarian capitalism in Mallorca: Peasant endurance under
This post is written by Kira Brenner, Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. In July of 2018, I met a group of women who had been occupying their former factory for six months, located in an industrial area outside of the tourist city of Monastir, on the central coast of Tunisia. The factory closed in December, and their sit-in began immediately after. They have suffered numerous
This post is written by Anna Lindley, Senior Lecturer in Migration, Mobility and Development at SOAS, and Clara Della Croce, Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Law at SOAS. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons License. Read the original article. Britain’s already Kafkaesque immigration detention system has reached new heights as it’s become clear that migrants who’ve successfully challenged their immigration detention are remaining incarcerated,
This post is written by Alessandra Mezzadri, Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS and author of The Sweatshop Regime (CUP, 2017). When it comes to the fate of sweatshop workers worldwide, one of the most under-researched areas of concern is what happens to them upon leaving the sweatshop. We know all about the poor wages they get, their little access to social contributions, and their great exposure to occupational health
This post is written by Hassan Ould Moctar, Doctoral Researcher and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. One evening while sitting in a café in the northern Mauritanian port city of Nouadhibou, I was unexpectedly joined by a member of the Spanish Guardia Civil and a companion of his. I was on a research trip to Nouadhibou and had been introduced to the Guardia Civil officer
