A Not So ‘New Dawn’ for International Economic Law and Development: Towards a Social Reproduction Approach to GVCs

This article has three aims. First, it takes issue with the argument of international economic institutions according to which states need to adopt deeper trade and investment commitments to sustain value chain trade if they wish to either ‘develop’ or continue being competitive in the global economy. It scrutinizes the evidence on the basis of which this argument is formulated and finds it to be tenuous at best. It also finds that current data is unable to account for the variety of factors that contribute to so-called ‘social downgrade’ – that is, the deterioration of working and living conditions, including the presence of informal and migrant workers. Second, it draws on feminist political economy to make sense of the co-existence of ‘economic upgrade’ and ‘social downgrade’ in global value chains. Specifically, it adopts a social reproduction lens to shed a light on the increasingly relevant, but invisibilized and/or devalued, role that social reproductive labour and informal labour play in processes of trans/national value creation. Third, it argues that a social reproduction lens can offer valuable insights on international economic agreements and the impact of their provisions on the ability of states and communities to improve working and living conditions.