Marzi or Majburi? Towards a recentring of economic coercion in forced labour

This article takes up the question of the role of economic coercion in debates about forced labour. It does so by considering the case of women labouring below minimum wages in apparel and textile supply chains in India through the prism of two approaches to forced labour. Considered first is the approach of the ILO, which, in framing coercion, has tended to prioritise the arrangement of the labour relation ahead of the economic circumstances of the worker. The evolving approach of the ILO is highlighted by contrasts with Marxian political economic approaches that incorporate a readiness to focus more squarely on economic dimensions of labour unfreedom. This is followed by an analysis of the framing of forced labour in the case of PUDR vs Union of India & Others, 1982. The potential of these different articulations of forced labour to account for factors of economic coercion is explored by drawing on semi-structured interviews with 24 women homeworkers in apparel and textile supply chains in India’s National Capital Region. The paper then considers the appropriateness of these framings in the light of understandings of labour unfreedom in the contemporary economy, discussing implications for legal and policy responses to forced labour that attend both to worker agency and to the inexorabilities of global capitalism.