Journal of Economic Geography· 2026Q1
Polycrisis and labour agency in global production networks: evidence from Bangladesh’s apparel industry
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
The polycrisis, driven by interacting crises like Rana Plaza, COVID-19, and climate change, reconfigures labour agency in Bangladesh's apparel industry by altering workers' opportunity structures through legitimacy, profitability, and social reproduction pressures.
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Key points
- A spatial-temporal analytical framework is developed to understand how polycrisis reshapes labour agency.
- Interactions, amplification, and acceleration across crises reconfigure workers' opportunity structures.
- Legitimacy, profitability, and social reproduction pressures are key mechanisms influencing labour agency.
- The study examines the cumulative effects of Rana Plaza, COVID-19, and climate crisis on Bangladesh's apparel industry workers.
- Labour agency shifts over time across associational, coalitional, and micro-practices.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Abstract This article explains how temporally uneven polycrisis reshapes labour agency within apparel production networks. Developing a spatial–temporal analytical framework, it shows how interactions, amplification, and acceleration across crises reconfigure workers’ opportunity structures through legitimacy, profitability, and social reproduction pressures. This qualitative case study of Bangladesh’s apparel industry examines how the Rana Plaza accident, COVID-19, and the climate crisis interacted to produce cumulative effects that enabled openings and constrained mobilization, shifting labour agency across associational, coalitional, and micro-practices over time. The study advances labour regime analysis by demonstrating the temporal contingency and spatial situatedness of labour agency during polycrisis.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Economic Geography, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Development
DevelopmentSocial Sciences