THRREADS: Transforming Responsive and Relational Autonomy in the Garment Sector of the United Kingdom and Bangladesh

主题：改变英国和孟加拉国服装行业的响应式和关系式自治

• 批准号: ES/W013207/1
• 负责人: Shoba Arun
• 金额: $ 69.52万
• 依托单位: University of Essex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FW013207%2F1
• 关键词: THRREADS; Transforming; Responsive; Relational; Autonomy

The garment industry comprises nearly 60 million workers around the world, many employed in vulnerable, marginalised, low paid and impoverished forms of work. This project is set in two locations where the garment industry is a significant economic sector - Dhaka in Bangladesh and Leicester in the UK. Despite their many differences, they share recent histories of tragedy and scandal that have drawn attention to exploitative working conditions, raised questions about the effectiveness of legislation, and underscored the importance of global economic cooperation for growth and justice. Our project is propelled through a unique partnership between academia and practice. It is needed because a significant gap remains in understanding why the garment sector lags behind with measures on rights-focused legislation, policies and practices. We put forward a bold international research agenda to meet the urgent need for ways to improve practices in the sector. Building upon a growing body of research and political interest in exploitative work regimes, the project draws on the feminist-inflected idea of autonomy as relational (meaning that it is socially embedded and shaped by communal traditions and norms). In the workplace, this implies that worker autonomy must be understood within wider transformations in the global economy and constrained by factors including gender, migrant status, and racial relations. Through the lens of relational autonomy, we examine the impact of both social relationships and socio-historical circumstances that affect capacities, for example, as worker, mother, woman (girl) shaped by the interface of household and work roles, gendered norms, and absent voices. The project takes a worker-centred focus to measure changes to work practices, deploying a locally contextualised and mixed methods approach that is simultaneously comparative across the two countries. It will do this through four complementary work strands:1 A rapid desk-based review to update existing evidence, and a baseline survey of workplaces in the two sites to fill gaps in knowledge about current workplace practices and knowledge of legislation. 2 'Community Conversations' and awareness-raising workshops to improve the qualitative, experiential evidence base, and to mobilise voices of change.3 An 'Autonomy Lab' for co-creating an index of workplace practices, drawing together results of work strands 1 & 2 to feed into intervention at the factory level.4 An intensive programme of dissemination and engagement to translate learning from the project into action, including a Leicester Accord.Co-creation is one hallmark of our project, informed by our recent international work advancing co-creation with citizens across Europe who lack power and voice. We have shaped the project design along with partners in close day-to-day contact with people who are the 'experts by experience' most affected by working conditions in the garment industry. Work stands 2 and 3 are inherently co-creative in ways that are theoretically oriented as well as culturally and contextually sensitive.Tangible, re-usable project outputs include a new, empirically grounded Anti-Slavery Index and an Action Plan. Our active dissemination and engagement will ensure their take up as learning and policy resources for local manufacturers, international buyers and government policymakers, explicitly linked to the garment industries of Bangladesh and the UK. The project will build new alignments for incremental changes in the South to share learning with similar work sectors in the North in the post-pandemic world, with an ambition for a Leicester Accord.This is a timely project. Covid-19 renders precarity and insecurity as pressing challenges and adds urgency to investigate if current progress addressing exploitative labour regimes in the garment sector can be strengthened to work toward a global accord that prevents exploitative work practices.

服装行业在全球拥有近6000万工人，其中许多人从事弱势、边缘化、低薪和贫困的工作。该项目设置在两个地方，服装业是一个重要的经济部门-达卡在孟加拉国和莱斯特在英国。尽管它们之间存在许多差异，但它们都有着最近的悲剧和丑闻历史，这些悲剧和丑闻引起了人们对剥削性工作条件的关注，对立法的有效性提出了质疑，并强调了全球经济合作对增长和正义的重要性。我们的项目是通过学术界和实践之间的独特伙伴关系推进。之所以需要这样做，是因为在理解为什么服装业在注重权利的立法、政策和做法方面落后方面仍然存在重大差距。我们提出了一个大胆的国际研究议程，以满足改善该部门做法的迫切需要。在对剥削性工作制度越来越多的研究和政治兴趣的基础上，该项目借鉴了女权主义者关于自主作为关系的想法（这意味着它是社会嵌入的，并由社区传统和规范塑造）。在工作场所，这意味着必须在全球经济更广泛的变革中理解工人的自主权，并受到性别、移民身份和种族关系等因素的限制。通过关系自主性的透镜，我们研究的影响，社会关系和社会历史的情况下，影响能力，例如，作为工人，母亲，妇女（女孩）的家庭和工作角色，性别规范，和缺席的声音的接口塑造。该项目以工人为中心来衡量工作实践的变化，部署了一种在两国同时具有可比性的本地背景和混合方法方法。它将通过四个相辅相成的工作领域来做到这一点：1快速案头审查，以更新现有证据，以及对两个地点的工作场所进行基线调查，以填补对当前工作场所做法和立法知识的了解方面的空白。2“社区对话”和提高认识讲习班，以改善质量和经验证据库，并动员变革的声音。3“自主实验室”，共同创建工作场所实践指数，汇集工作线1和2的成果，以投入工厂层面的干预措施。4密集的传播和参与计划，将项目中的学习转化为行动，包括莱斯特雅阁。共同创造是我们项目的一个标志，我们最近的国际工作推动了与欧洲各地缺乏权力和声音的公民的共同创造。我们与合作伙伴一起沿着塑造了项目设计，并与那些受服装行业工作条件影响最大的“经验专家”密切接触。工作站2和3在本质上是以理论为导向的共同创造方式，以及文化和背景敏感。可重复使用的项目产出包括一个新的，以经验为基础的反奴隶制指数和行动计划。我们的积极传播和参与将确保它们成为当地制造商，国际买家和政府决策者的学习和政策资源，与孟加拉国和英国的服装行业明确联系在一起。该项目将为南方的渐进式变革建立新的联盟，以便在大流行后的世界中与北方的类似工作部门分享学习，并致力于达成一项莱斯特雅阁。新型冠状病毒疫情使不稳定和不安全成为紧迫的挑战，并增加了调查的紧迫性，即是否可以加强目前在解决服装行业剥削性劳动制度方面的进展，以努力达成一项防止剥削性工作做法的全球雅阁。