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

服装业由世界各地近6000万工人组成，其中许多人受雇于脆弱、边缘化、低收入和贫困的工作形式。这个项目的背景设在服装业是一个重要经济部门的两个地方--孟加拉国的达卡和英国的莱斯特。尽管有许多不同之处，但它们都有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，引发了对立法有效性的质疑，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界之间独特的合作伙伴关系来推动的。这是必要的，因为在理解为什么服装部门在注重权利的立法、政策和做法方面的措施落后方面仍然存在很大差距。我们提出了一项大胆的国际研究议程，以满足改进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，该项目利用了女权主义者反映的自治是关系的思想(这意味着它是社会嵌入的，并受到社区传统和规范的塑造)。在工作场所，这意味着必须在全球经济的更广泛变革中理解工人自治，并受到性别、移民地位和种族关系等因素的限制。通过关系自主的视角，我们考察了社会关系和影响能力的社会历史环境的影响，例如，作为工人、母亲、由家庭和工作角色的接口塑造的妇女(女孩)、性别规范和缺席的声音。该项目以工人为中心，衡量工作实践的变化，部署了一种结合当地情况和混合方法的方法，同时在两国具有可比性。它将通过四个相辅相成的工作部门来做到这一点：1以案头为基础的快速审查以更新现有证据，并对两个地点的工作场所进行基线调查，以填补目前工作场所做法知识和立法知识方面的空白。2“社区对话”和提高认识研讨会，以改善质量和经验证据基础，并动员变革的声音。3“自主实验室”，共同创建工作场所实践的索引，汇集第一和第二工作线索的结果，用于工厂层面的干预。4密集的传播和参与计划，将从项目中学到的知识转化为行动，包括《莱斯特协议》。共同创造是我们项目的一个标志，我们最近的国际工作促进了与欧洲各地缺乏权力和发言权的公民的共同创造。我们与合作伙伴一起制定了项目设计，与受服装行业工作条件影响最大的“经验专家”进行了密切的日常接触。工作台2和工作台3在理论上以及文化和背景敏感的方式上具有内在的共同创造性。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、国际买家和政府政策制定者的学习和政策资源，明确与孟加拉国和英国的服装业有关。该项目将为南方的渐进式变化建立新的联盟，以便与大流行后世界上北方的类似工作部门分享经验，并雄心勃勃地达成《莱斯特协议》。这是一个及时的项目。新冠肺炎将早产和不安全列为紧迫的挑战，并增加了调查的紧迫性，即是否可以加强当前解决服装行业剥削性劳工制度的进展，以努力达成一项防止剥削性工作做法的全球协议。

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.