Unfree Again: Social Reproduction, Flexible Labour Markets and the Resurgence of Gang Labour in the UK

Abstract

The reproduction of human insecurity in contemporary capitalist societies is linked to the need to “produce” labour at a price that permits the realisation of surplus value, and crises of social reproduction (both generalised and specific). In this paper I use a social reproduction lens to focus on the example of the emergence, and recent resurgence, of gang labour in the UK. I look first at the gang labour system, its evolution, and processes and institutions of regulation. The paper then examines the ways in which the gang labour system sheds light on interrelationship of relations of production and reproduction, processes of class formation, and how the power of supermarkets and the political imperative to keep food costs down, which are related to patterns of migration and racialisation, privilege the reproduction of some workers over others. This in turn signals the need to engage with the role and significance of unfree labour in contemporary economies.

Unfree Labour Beyond Binaries

“…8 See Peterson (2003Peterson ( , 2010, Agathangelou (2004) and Vosko (2010). 9 See Andrees and Belser (2009), United States Department of Labour (2010), Phillips and Sakamoto (2012), Strauss (2012) and Verité (2012aVerité ( , 2012b. 10 Neo-slavery accounts commonly argue that slavery has accelerated massively across recent decades and some scholars even argue that we're seeing unprecedented amounts of unfree labour (cf.…”

“Our Public Library”: Social reproduction and urban public space in Toronto

“…This reprivatization of social reproduction (Bakker, 2003) deepens the international division of reproductive labor and increases women's reliance on unpaid or low-paid work to maintain life. Therefore, along with race, class, and gender, the geographical expansion of human insecurity as social reproduction is continually marketized privileges the reproduction of some workers over others (Strauss, 2013).…”

New Zealand's turbulent waters: the use of forced labour in the fishing industry

“…To date, forced labour has received disproportionately less attention than sex trafficking in the academic literature (cf. Smit 2011;Strauss 2013;Zhang 2012). This may be because it is difficult to quantify, for it is 'not always clear as to whether the described practice meets the legal definitions of forced labour or human trafficking found in the international legal instruments' (ILO 2013: 14).…”

“…Such abuse can occur for a number of reasons, such as when the price paid to the contractor fails to cover the cost of worker wages and benefits, or when contractors seek to extract an additional surplus (Barrientos 2013). The former leads to rights abuses (wages below the minimum wage, non-payment of benefits and so forth) and the latter to 'unfree labour', for example when workers are unable to exit a relationship freely (Barrientos 2013;Strauss 2013). In practice, rights abuses and unfree labour practices often intertwine and, as Barrientos points out, there are degrees of abuse and lack of freedom -a continuum rather than a categorical distinction.…”