The economic fallout from COVID-19 has precipitated a crisis in global supply chains. The lockdown of consumers worldwide has triggered a fall in demand that has so far led to the dismissal of up to one-third of Cambodia’s garment sector workforce. Though the pandemic is exceptional, this is a crisis rooted in the exemplary rather than extraordinary hyper-precarity of workers in global industry. Here, I argue that COVID-19 spotlights the elusive ‘dark sides’ of global production in economic geography, revealing the necrocapitalist logics of supply chains.
AnnerM (2020) Abandoned? The Impact of Covid-19 on Workers and Businesses at the Bottom of Global Garment Supply Chains. Pennsylvania: CGWR.
2.
BairJ (2019) Dialectics of dissociation. Dialogues in Human Geography9(1): 68–72.
3.
BairJWernerM (2011) Commodity chains and the uneven geographies of global capitalism: a disarticulations perspective. Environment and Planning A43: 988–997.
4.
BalanN (2020) Government-in-a-box, or understanding pandemic measures as biopolitics. TOPIA: COVID-19 Essays. DOI: 10.3138/topia.2020.COVID-19.10.
ChuaCDanylukMCowenD, et al. (2018) Introduction: turbulent circulation: building a critical engagement with logistics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space36(4): 617–629.
7.
FlynnGMechD (2020) Garment workers cornered by job loss, virus fears and looming debt. VOD, 16 April.
8.
House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2019) Fixing Fashion: Clothing Consumption and Sustainability. London: House of Commons.
9.
ILO (2018) Living Conditions of Garment and Footwear Sector Workers in Cambodia. Phnom Penh: ILO.
10.
LaurieEWShawIG, (2018) Violent conditions: the injustices of being. Political Geography65: 8–16.
11.
Licadho (2020) Driven Out: One Village’s Experience With Mfis and Cross-Border Migration. Phnom Penh: Licadho.
12.
Long (2020) Buyers urged to pay up as 200,000 face layoffs. Phnom Penh Post, 5 May.
13.
MurphyJT (2019) Global production network dis/articulations in Zanzibar: practices and conjunctures of exclusionary development in the tourism industry. Journal of Economic Geography19(4): 943–971.
14.
NovaSZeldenrustI (2020) Who will Bail Out the Workers who make our Clothes? Worker Rights Consortium White Paper. Washington: Worker Rights Consortium.
15.
PhelpsNAAtienzaMAriasM (2018) An invitation to the dark side of economic geography. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space50(1): 236–244.
16.
RoyA (2020) The pandemic is a portal. Financial Times, 3 April.
17.
SelwynB (2019) Poverty chains and global capitalism. Competition & Change23(1): 71–97.
18.
TynerJ (2019) Dead Labour: Towards a Political Economy of Premature Death. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
