New Work
Book
Reverse Subsidies: Gender, Labour, and Environmental Injustice in Garment Value Chains, Cambridge University Press, 2022
How do lead firms on fast fashion supply chains cut costs by exploiting women workers and the environment? How does the structure of global value chains in contemporary capitalism facilitate these injustices? How does an understanding of reverse subsidies help us to challenge supply chain exploitation? How can we transform this system?
I am extremely excited to share our new book – Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism: Gender, Labour, and Environmental Injustice in Garment Value Chains. Based on five years of field work, we use the concept of reverse subsidies to explain the purchase of gendered labour and environmental services by lead firms in garment value chains below their costs of production. The resulting higher profits from the low prices of garments are captured by global fashion brands, using their monopsony position, with few buyers and myriad sellers in the market. On the basis of this research, we link the concept of reverse subsidies with those of injustice, inequality, and sustainability in global production.
Articles
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, “Contesting Caste: Institutionalized Oppression and Circumventive Legal Mobilization,” (forthcoming, Law and Social Inquiry 2024).
People who mobilize to protect their rights in highly oppressive contexts may have to navigate government institutions that not only fail to implement protections, but also reproduce discriminatory practices. This paper introduces the term circumventive legal resistance to describe practices of making legally grounded claims but facilitating relief through processes of expression and negotiation that are distinct from explicit mechanisms of legal enforcement. Based upon a study of 27 rural, semi-rural, and urban areas across the north and north-west regions of India, this paper documents how Dalit —a self-designated term for so-called “untouchables” who occupy the lowest place in the caste system—women mobilize to protect their rights in contexts where local institutions do not enforce laws prohibiting caste discrimination and instead reproduce caste-based forced labor practices. In particular, I focus on a campaign to end manual scavenging—a form of caste-based forced labor that is one of the worst surviving symbol of untouchability. With local channels to legal relief largely foreclosed, Dalit women who leave manual scavenging engage in circumventive legal resistance: they draw on law to make claims but win relief through avenues distinct from those envisioned within the parameters of the law.
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, “Zones of Compounded Informality: Migrants in the Megacity,” Political and Legal Anthropology Review 2023, 1-15.
This paper introduces the term zones of compounded informality to demarcate locations wherein regulatory exclusions in distinct domains interact to escalate the impact of exclusions for people who live and work in these areas. Based upon a study of India’sDelhi, National Capital Region (Delhi-NCR), I explain how the interaction of flexible planning and employment in particular locales produce zones of compounded informality as a technique of governance. Circular migrant workers in Delhi-NCR overwhelmingly live and work in these zones, wherein unstable employment and housing contribute to nomadic migration. Legal exclusion from housing protections interacts with other procedural pathways, creating barriers to accessing social protection and citizenship rights. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation, interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), and a survey of 981 workers, I consider how zones of compounded informality in Delhi-NCR interact with India’s Aadhar biometric identification system to variegate access to the franchise and Targeted Public Distribution System (PDS) for migrant and other low-wage workers.
Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, “Bitter Harvest: Supply Chain Oppression and Legal Exclusion of Agricultural Workers,” 2023 U. ILL. L. REV. (August 2023).
Persistent exploitation of farmworkers is a defining problem of our time. An estimated 32 percent of the global population is employed in agriculture. At the base of global food systems, agricultural workers sustain the world’s population while systematically excluded from labor rights protections. Through an analysis of restrictions on labor rights for agricultural workers in 110 countries, this article distills a typology of legal exclusion that persists to date across the globe. These exclusions articulate with labor exploitation at the base of agri-food supply chains, and economic and social hierarchies constructed by race, caste, indigeneity, gender, and migration status. How can we upend this legal architecture of oppression, rooted in racialized and gendered capitalism? The global understanding advanced in this article is critical to dismantling legal architectures of oppression. At the national level, it provides a framework for identifying and addressing layered mechanisms of legal exclusion in their own jurisdictions. Moreover, since agricultural supply chains operate globally, it provides importance guidance for protecting workers rights on agri-food supply chains, including through binding due diligence legislation in headquarter economies of lead firms, enforceable brand agreements, and inclusion of labor rights in food safety and environmental standards. Finally, due to the structure of monopsony capitalism, in order to raise the floor for agricultural workers worldwide, legal exclusions must be ratcheted up across jurisdictions. Global analysis, then, provides a roadmap for strengthening international standards and global campaigns.
Social Design
Colorado Virtual Courthouse (interactive training for self-represented litigants), 2022 (with Colorado Legal Services, Legal Services Corporation, NuLawLab, HELM Studio).
The Colorado Virtual Courthouse is a guided, 360-degree virtual tour of a Colorado courthouse, designed to help Self Represented Litigants (SRLS) navigate court and improve access to justice. It introduces key court staff, explains common court procedures, and provides resources and information to promote better legal outcomes for SRLs.
Core to the HELM Studio mission, we center accessibility –across languages (English/Spanish), disabilities, and access to representation. As COVID-19 continues to restrict in person access to legal service organizations, our hope is that this tool makes court less daunting for people in Colorado facing landlord-tenant disagreements, divorce and child custody matters, money/debt cases, and more.
This project is a collaboration between HELM Social Design Studio, Colorado Legal Services, and Northeastern University Law Lab.