In Chapters 4 to 10, we saw how value is extracted through the purchase of inputs, gendered labour power, and environmental services at prices below their respective costs of production. Such acquisitions of inputs below their costs of production were identified as subsidies. These subsidies are extracted in different nodes or locations: the garment manufacturing factory, the household, including the rural household, and the enviroment. In the framework chapters, we have argued that these subsidies, though extracted at different nodes of the global value chain (GVC), end up with, or are captured by, the brands that govern or are lead firms in these value chains. This argument is similar, but not equal, to the Marxist distinction between the location of value production and realization, where there is a distinction in the firm and country location of value production and value realization (D. Harvey 2017).

In this chapter, we discuss the manner in which monopsony functions to bring about value capture by brands. The analysis in this chapter is built on the primary material gathered from discussions with over 100 suppliers from different research projects during the five-year period of 2016 to 2020. One round of investigations was with about 60 garment suppliers across the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR), Jaipur, Surat, Bangalore, and Tiruppur as part of the International Labour Organisation Apparel Export Promotion Corporation (ILO-AEPC), a quasi-government body study of management practices in Indian garment suppliers (Nathan and Harsh 2018). The management weaknesses reported in this study led to the ILO-AEPC Handbook of Good International Practices in the Garment Industry. This report also formed the basis of a paper (Nathan and Harsh 2018) on process upgrading in the garment industry.

During 2017–2019, the Society for Labour and Development (SLD) carried out a questionnaire-based survey of 45 garment firms in Delhi NCR, Bangalore, and Tiruppur. The data from this survey was filled out with inputs from senior officials of the firms. Besides these project-based surveys,the researchers have also interacted with various suppliers and brand representatives in many multi-stakeholder initiatives. These interactions date back to our participation in the Capturing the Gains (CtG) research programme between 2011 and 2016.

Information gathered from these discussions do not fit into survey-type results. But they are important in forming impressions of how buyer–supplier bargaining functions.

Chapter 2 goes back in time to the three entrepreneurs’ lives in a peaceful prewar Syria, and their flights to safety in Za'atari. All three lead comfortable lives before the sudden, life-altering events of the Arab Spring: protests in Dara'a, the Syrian government’s violent response, and families fleeing homes amid subsequent fighting. Yasmina is living out her childhood passion, running a salon and wedding shop in Dara'a. Her family flees when she is seven months pregnant; on the way to Za'atari, they shelter in others' homes and abandoned schoolhouses, and her son is born premature. Asma grew up adoring school, but her lack of confidence and the busyness of raising a family kept her from her dream of teaching. Still, living in a large house with an olive tree in Dara'a, Asma enjoys her days reading to her children, Tamara, Ashraf, and newborn Maya. Just twenty days after Maya’s birth, Asma's family flees. Only a teenager and the youngest of thirteen siblings, Malak leads a joyful life filled with art, family, and friends in Damascus. She cries with her sisters just before leaving, unwilling to accept that the next morning she would wake up in a tent within a refugee camp.

INTRODUCTION

The human development approach is holistic and freedom-based, reflecting the richness of human lives. Human development aims to expand all people's freedoms by directly enhancing human capabilities and creating conditions for decent and fulfilling lives. The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) identifies and profiles the situations of those who face acute deprivations in three foundational aspects of human development: health, education and standard of living (Box 7.1). The human development approach and the reduction of multidimensional poverty share common roots in Amartya Sen's capability approach and theory of development as freedom and draw upon three fundamental features: people, participation and policy.

People The human development approach emerged out of an understanding that economic or monetary indicators do not sufficiently measure progress in human flourishing; they do not reflect the richness of people's lives and the diversity of their well-being. Drawing on Sen's capability approach, the objective became the expansion of human freedom and reduction of disadvantages of many kinds. In other words, development aims to improve and enlarge human capabilities, along with actual achieved levels of well-being (Deneulin, 2004: 26). The assessment criteria reflect “the things people can do and be in their lives, now and in the future” – or what Sen called ‘functionings’ or ‘beings and doings’ (Deneulin, Shahani and International Development Research Centre, 2009: 23). This means that human development and poverty are inescapably multidimensional (Sen, 2000).

Participation and empowerment Participation serves as a key principle of the human development approach, as articulated by Mahbub ul Haq (Deneulin, 2004). Amartya Sen argues that people should be not seen as patients or beneficiaries of development, but as active agents, both as groups and individuals (Sen, 1985, 1999). The human development approach seeks to empower and support people as agents who determine their own life and the life of their communities (Deneulin, Shahani and International Development Research Centre, 2009).

Participation and empowerment also have an instrumental role in poverty reduction. Indeed, the “Moving Out of Poverty Study” interviewed persons who had exited poverty to ascertain what they perceived as the most important cause of their success: assistance from kinship networks; actions by government or nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), faith-based groups, or businesses; transferred or earned income, and so on.

Chapter 11 discusses the economic, social, spiritual, and personal impact of refugee entrepreneurship around the world. Za'atari is but one example: camps across the globe – from Kutupalong in Bangladesh, to Skaramagas in Greece, to Dadaab in Kenya – have emerged as hubs of entrepreneurship, to the surprise of those who imagine refugees in camps as passively reliant on aid. And refugees have ignited significant positive change in refugee-welcoming cities around the world as well – from Bosnian, Burmese, and Somali refugees revitalizing the once-declining Rust Belt city of Utica, New York, to long-persecuted Hazara refugees creating new ventures to revive the community of Port Adelaide, Australia. While there is an up-front economic cost to welcoming refugees into cities from camps like Za'atari, that investment is clearly a positive one thanks to refugees' contributions in the form of business growth, social innovation, and cultural enrichment. This is not to mention the quiet moments of love, comfort, and togetherness created by refugees’ very presence as neighbors, colleagues, and friends in communities around the world.

This chapter shows how reorganization law changed dramatically during the 1970s. A group of skilled lawyers and academics returned to first principles and boldly reworked reorganization law once again. In their hands, the unwritten law that governs today took its modern form. These reformers focused squarely on creating an environment that was conducive to bargaining. Judges were to provide oversight, but they were no longer to do the heavy-handed policing upon which New Deal reformers had insisted. At the same time, however, judges had to embrace the basic norms of the credit men and do more than simply ensure that everyone had a seat at the table. Bargaining had to be forthright, and parties could not conceal conflicts of interest or advance private agendas.

During the 1980s, Thomas Jackson and I showed how reorganization law took nonbankruptcy rights as it found them. It limited itself to sorting out the collective action problem that existed when a corporate debtor lacked the assets to meet all its obligations in full. The challenge was one of sorting out nonbankruptcy entitlements, ensuring that assets were being put to their highest valued use, and at the same time requiring the debtor to play by the same rules as everyone else. Although this view of reorganization law does not seem especially controversial today, it led to much sturm and drang, most notably perhaps in the spirited, but consistently civil debates that I had with Elizabeth Warren during this period.

Chapter 5 describes the moments that the three Za'atari entrepreneurs push beyond their darkness to find their ideas – each tapping into their childhood passions through different catalyzing events. Yasmina helps prepare her cousin for her wedding in Za'atari, receives rave reviews, and sees her passion rekindled. Determining that she needed to help support her children, she makes the monumental decision to sell her rings, necklace, and bracelet for startup capital. She plans for the launch of a salon and wedding dress store from her home trailer. After her son’s death, Asma resolves to treat the children in Za'atari as if they are her own. Much to her joy, she attends a teacher training program sponsored by an NGO and comes home with educational books that she can use in preparing her storytelling initiative. Art continues to be Malak’s light during her transition to Za'atari, especially as she begins to share her art outside of her trailer. With the encouragement of a Za'atari art teacher, her sister Hoda, her father, and her best friend Treza, she decides to launch an art studio from her home trailer. Treza would manage it, and they would seek to share Malak's art widely.

So far, we have dealt with the household as a site for the reproduction of labour power. However, the household is also a site for production to perform tasks outsourced from the factories. There are two types of home-based workers. First, those who buy inputs, perform some value-adding tasks, and sell the output. These are called either own-account workers or self-employed workers. Street vendors and hawkers are of this type who operate on their own account. The second type of home-based worker constitutes those who perform tasks specified by an employer. Women in Informal Employment, Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), the international network of women in the unorganized sector, refers to this type of home-based workers as homeworkers, and this terminology will be followed here.

The ILO Convention 177 on Home Work defines home work as

Since we are considering sites of production, it is important to note that to qualify as homework, work must be carried out on a site ‘other than the workplace’ and carried out ‘as specified by the employer’. Since homework is carried out as specified by the employer, it qualifies as part of the global value chain (GVC), where work contracted to the manufacturer of garments is outsourced to a homeworker. The relation between the manufacturer, the exporter, and the homeworker is not of the market type where the homeworker sells goods or services to the manufacturer. Rather, the manufacturer contracts for the performance of tasks, usually embroidery or finishing an almost-finished garment.

These subcontracted homeworkers occupy an intermediate space between independent own-account workers and factory workers (Raveendran, Sudarshan, and Vanek 2013). They differ from own-account workers in that they are not sellers of their output. The finished pieces of work are returned to the factory, via the contractor, and the homeworkers are paid for the tasks performed.

In the 1930s, a group of New Deal reformers joined the investment bankers and the credit men to refashion the bargaining environment once again. The consensus that emerged during this decade is the focus of the book’s fourth chapter. The New Deal reformers brought their own distinctive understanding of how judges were to oversee negotiations among creditors and their common debtor. They believed that judges had to take steps to ensure that, at every turn, the bargaining process did not slight the rights of passive investors who had neither the information nor the sophistication to bargain on equal terms with Wall Street insiders.

Introduction

In this chapter, we look at the utilization of environmental products and services, or ecosystem services, and the manner in which their costs are met within or externalized from the core garment global value chain (GVC) production system, resulting in subsidies. These ecosystem services include provisioning services, such as raw materials and water, besides other materials used in production, such as fuel, biogenic materials, plant protection, and medicinal materials. The garment GVC also uses regulating services, such as waste decomposition and air and water purification. These provisioning and regulating services are used both in garment production and in the production of raw cotton.

Ecosystem services are either secured through market-based exchanges or extracted by non-market appropriation. Market exchanges include the acquisition of fresh water through payment to local municipalities. This may be underpriced, in the sense that it does not cover the replacement cost of the fresh water. It may also be secured free, as in the extraction of groundwater by raw cotton cultivators. The result of such underpriced or non-priced appropriation is the overuse and depletion of a renewable, but exhaustible, resource.

The cost of ecosystem services also includes the use of water (in the form of a reservoir formed by a dam in the case of garment manufacture in Tiruppur) and land resources (in the case of raw cotton cultivation) for the dumping of waste generated in the production process. Garment factories, particularly through their dyeing and printing segments, produce sludge as waste while raw cotton agriculture produces degraded land with inorganic fertilizer and pesticide residues.

Environmental Subsidies

The manner in which ecosystem service subsidies are created may be partly through the market mechanism and partly through non-market mechanisms. Even in market mechanisms, there may be subsidies through underpricing. Non-market mechanisms of appropriation, as in the case of groundwater for the cultivation of cotton, are a clear case of subsidy. How do we decide that there is underpricing and thus a subsidy? Take the case of water for garment factories. We have to use some system of valuing ecosystem services from renewable natural assets. Non-renewable assets would pose a different problem and we do not go into that. There exist a number of systems for valuing ecosystem services, the most prominent of which are that of contingent valuation and of replacement cost.