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Health and safety in garment workers’ lives: setting a new research agenda
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 08:57 authored by Rebecca PrenticeRebecca Prentice, Geert De NeveGeert De Neve, Alessandra Mezzadri, Kanchana N RuwanpuraAmidst new global initiatives to promote garment workers’ health and safety following a spate of deadly factory disasters across the Global South, this critical review calls for an expanded research agenda that looks beyond the workplace to examine the complex politics, spatialities, and temporalities of garment workers’ health and wellbeing. Drawing on ethnographic research on garment workers across South Asia, we argue against a narrow, technocratic, and depoliticised emphasis on physical infrastructures and building safety, and advocate instead a more holistic and politically-engaged research approach to the everyday health and wellbeing of workers. A conceptual focus on health and wellbeing offers a window onto workers’ employment experiences and reveals how routine work pressures, exhaustion and ill health are shaped by the dynamics of global supply chains, even well after workers have disengaged from these global circuits. Understanding how garment work affects workers’ wellbeing and their prospects for a fulfilling life requires research that moves beyond the workplace and covers the entire life course.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
GeoforumISSN
0016-7185Publisher
ElsevierExternal DOI
Volume
88Page range
157-160Department affiliated with
- Anthropology Publications
Research groups affiliated with
- Sussex Centre for Migration Research Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2017-12-14First Open Access (FOA) Date
2020-01-01First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2017-12-14Usage metrics
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