Conceptualising socio-economic formations of labour and workers’ power in global production networks

Despite the importance today of global production networks in linking the international division of labour between the Global North and the Global South, the workers in such networks receive relatively little attention from those interested in the sociology of work. This study applies Glucksmann’s concept of ‘socio-economic formations of labour’ to understand global production networks as an instituted economic process that helps perpetuate an uneven global capitalism, and reveals a specific configuration of macro- and micro-scale labour formations in China’s garment sector. We argue that labour agency is a productive factor negotiating global production networks while under the constraints of capital and management. Taking a bottom–up perspective, socio-economic factors are found to give China’s garment workers significant power in various forms which – to a certain extent – shapes the multi-layered structure of garment global production networks. Workers’ power is conceptualised by sociological tools in order to substantiate the concept of abstract labour.