For more than two decades, there have been discussions about how to sustainably improve the situation of garment workers in so-called low-wage countries in the Global South. The dominant answers to date are top-down approaches from the Global North, which attempt to determine and regulate from above the working conditions of mainly young women from rural areas. But what if we instead start with these garment workers and their agency on the ground? What if we start with these women and stay with them to explore their situations, their challenges and problems, and what new or alternative opportunities there might be for a transnational practice of solidarity from below in the global garment production network?
This book starts with (in)formal and (non-)unionized women workers in garment factories in Cambodia and stays with them to explore how women workers are spatially embedded in the global garment production network, how they (re)act as subjects of (re)production in their everyday spaces, and how they can network and organize from below on a transnational scale to fight for their real needs and demands on the ground. Drawing on a feminist labour geography perspective on global (re)production networks, Michaela Doutch’s book puts women workers in garment factories in Cambodia at the heart of the debate as key actors in change.