This joint SASE/RGVC online seminar explores the ways in which research on global value chains and production networks may offer insights, framings and orientations to be fruitfully mobilized by civil society groups, in their efforts to promote greater social and environmental protection in and around global value chains. The reorganization of the economy into transnational value chains has significantly challenged the capacity of civil society actors to (re-)embed economic forces into social and environmental safety nets, particularly at the national and local scales.

On the one hand, the rise of global value chains (GVCs) entailed a dilution of responsibilities among multiple, intertwined economic entities involved in the conception, production and sale of products and services. On the other, GVCs allowed for greater concentration of economic power by major lead firms on a global scale, a power that the complexity and opacity of value chains had rendered largely unaccountable. In response to such transformations, civil society movements have campaigned on multiple scales and reached out to both economic and public actors to promote social and environmental protection in and around GVCs’ operations.

Tackling GVCs remains a persistent challenge, for which GVC research may be usefully mobilized, as will be discussed through the sharing of various experiences of academic and civil society collaboration.

📌Program

Introduction – Florence Palpacuer (University of Montpellier, RGVC initiative) & Joonkoo Lee (School of Business, Hanyang University, SASENetwork O Global Value Chain)

Worker-Driven Co-Research in Latin American GVCs: Challenges and Opportunities

• Mark Anner (Rutgers University)

The global value chain in canned tuna and labour unionisation in Papua New Guinea

• Liam Campling (Queen Mary University of London)
• Liz Blackshaw (former labour organiser at International Transport Workers’ Federation; International Union of Food Workers; UK Trades Union Congress)

Lithium value chains and labor regimes

• Lucas Cifuentes (University of Manchester)
• Felipe Irarrázaval (Universidad de Chile)
• IndustriALL representative

From Global Value Chain Research to Cluster Transformation: Insights from the Green Threads Initiative

• Peter Lund-Thomsen (Copenhagen Business School)
• Amit Pande (Chief Operating Officer, FMC)

Discussion and concluding remarks