Global Labour, Activism and Social Justice Cluster

The Global Labour, Activism and Social Justice Cluster is a research network that focuses on the global political economy of production and work; global labour standards and politics; feminist political economy and political ecology approaches to labour; postcolonial and decolonial approaches to labour and work; intersecting inequalities of gender, race, and class; and global activism and social justice struggles related to all of the above.

Situated in the SOAS department of Development Studies, but also including colleagues and students from the SOAS Department of Economics, the cluster is organised as a vibrant inclusive space for intellectual reflection and collective analysis, and it promotes teaching and research collaborations on its core themes. Cluster members engage in detailed empirical research focusing on a vast number of regions, including East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Current research streams include:

• Global Supply Chain Capitalism, Labour regimes and Standards
• Feminist Political Economy and Social Reproduction
• Work in/and Crises 
• Urban Development and the Gig-Economy
• Racial Capitalism and Decolonial Approaches to Labour in Development
• Feminist Political Ecology and Labour
• Labour Activism and Social Justice Movements

Our research has theoretical, political and policy relevance, and we work with several UN organisations, international and local NGOs, civil society organisations and labour and social justice movements, and community groups. These include the ILO, War on Want, Labour Behind the Labour, Clean Clothes Campaign, Fashion Revolution, among others. We are committed to creating more equitable research partnerships in development research, recognising how colonial relationships can be reproduced through project design, funding modalities, and institutional structures of higher education.

The cluster’s research informs teaching across a great variety of department’s programmes and courses, and it has also informed summer schools at SOAS and abroad.

• Baglioni, E., Campling, L., Mezzadri, A., Miyamura, S., Pattenden, J. and Selwyn, B. (2022) "Exploitation and Labour Regimes: Production, Circulation, Social Reproduction, Ecology" in: Baglioni, Elena, Campling, Liam, Coe, Neil M., and Smith, Adrian, (eds.), Labour Regimes and Global Production. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, pp 81-100.
• Bargawi, H., Alami, R. and Ziada, H. (2022) "Re-negotiating Social Reproduction, Work and Gender Roles in Occupied Palestine." Review of International Political Economy, 29 (6). pp. 1917-1944.
• Bhattacharya, S., Kesar S. and Mehra S. (2022) "Exclusion, Surplus Population, and the Labour Question in Postcolonial Capitalism: Future Directions in Political Economy of Development". Review of Political Economy.
• Cramer, C and J. Sender (2025), 'Finding Out Faster: Pre-Survey Scoping for a Study of Deprivation in Majakaneng, Northwest Province, South Africa'. Journal of Southern African Studies (forthcoming). 
• Devika Dutt, Carolina Alves, Surbhi Kesar, Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven (2025) Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction. 
• Fernandes, M., Lupo, L., Benya, A., Dedeoğlu, S., Mezzadri, A., & Prügl, E. (2023). Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation. Dialogues in Human Geography, 13(3), 473-483.
• Kesar, S. (2024) ‘Subcontracting Linkages in India's Informal Economy’. Development and Change (55), 1, pp 38-75. 
• Kesar, S. and Goldstein, D. (2025) Introduction to the Symposium on Political Economy of Occupation, Colonialism, and Conflict in Palestine. Review of Radical Political Economics (57), 2, pp 260-265
• Kesar, Surbhi, 2023, Economic transition, dualism and informality in India: Nature and patterns of household‐level transitions. Review of Development Economics (27), 4, pp 2438-2469. 
• Kesar, Surbhi, Bhattacharya, Snehashish and Banerjee, Lopamudra, 2022, Contradictions and Crisis in the World of Work: Informality, Precarity and the Pandemic. Development and Change (53), 6, pp 1254-1282
• Kvangraven, Ingrid Harvold and Kesar, Surbhi, 2022, Standing in the way of rigor? Economics’ meeting with the decolonization agenda. Review of International Political Economy (30), 5, pp 1723-1748. 
• Lombardozzi, L. (2022). The marketisation of life: Entangling social reproduction theory and regimes of patriarchy through women’s work in post-Soviet Uzbekistan. Review of International Political Economy, 29(6), 1870-1893.
• Lombardozzi, L. (2023) The andro-white marketization of volunteer and community services: A case study of London’s social reproduction crisis. Geoforum, 140, 103697.
• Lombardozzi, L. (2024). The social reproduction of (and through) food: Agrarian change in Uzbekistan, The Journal of Agrarian Change.
• Meemken, Eva-Marie, Charlton, Diane, Christiaensen, Luc, Maertens, Miet, Oya, Carlos, Reardon, Thomas and Stemmler, Henry (2024) 'Better data for decent work in the global food system.' Nature Food, 5 (6). pp. 454-456.  
• Mezzadri A. (2025) Life and the Labour Process in the Planetary Social Factory. Global Labour Journal 16(2): 109-124. 
• Mezzadri, A. (2022) "The Social Reproduction of Pandemic Surplus Populations and Global Development Narratives on Inequality and Informal Labour" Development and Change
• Mezzadri, A. (2022). Social Reproduction and Pandemic Neoliberalism: Planetary Crises and the Reorganization of Life, Work and Death. Organization, 29(3), 379-400.
• Mezzadri, A. (2022). The Social Reproduction of Pandemic Surplus Populations and Global Development Narratives on Inequality and Informal Labour. Development and Change, 53(6), 1230-1253.
• Mezzadri, A. (2024) Value Theories in Motion: Circular Labour Migration, Unfinished Land Dispossession and Reproductive Struggles across the Urban-Rural Divide. Environment and Planning F. 
• Mezzadri, A. and Banerjee K. (2022) "When the Lewisian Dream Sours: Industrial Aspirations and Reverse Labour Migration" Journal of South Asian Development, 17 (3). pp. 297-326
• Mezzadri, A., Rai, S., Stevano, S., Alessandrini, D., Bargawi, H., Elias, J., Hassim, S., Kesar, S., Thiyaga Lingham, J., Natile, S., N., Neetha, Ossome, Lyn, Raghuram, Parvati, Tsikata, Dzodzi and Wöhl, Stefanie, (2025) ‘Pluralizing social reproduction approaches’. International Feminist Journal of Politics (27), 1, pp 6-33. 
• Mezzadri, A., Stevano, S., Ossome, L., & Bargawi, H. (2024) The social reproduction of agrarian change: Feminist political economy and rural transformations in the global south. An introduction. Journal of Agrarian Change, 24(3), Article e12595.
• Oya, C. (2022) "Doing labour regime research with large-scale surveys in Africa" In: Baglioni, Elena and Campling, Liam and Coe, Neil and Smith, Adrian, (eds.), Labour Regimes and Global Production. Newcastle: Agenda Publishing, pp 101-119. 
• Oya, C. and F. Schaefer (2023). ‘Do Chinese firms in Africa pay lower wages? A comparative analysis of manufacturing and construction firms in Angola and Ethiopia.’ World Development, 168. article no. 106266. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106266
• Oya, C. Schaefer, F., and Chen, W., (2022). Management Workforce Localization and Skill Development in Ethiopia's Light Manufacturing. IDCEA Research Report, SOAS, University of London. www.idcea.org
• Oya, C., & Schaefer, F. (2024). ONEILO-SIRAYE Programme Ethiopia: Evaluation Report. ONEILO-SIRAYE Programme Ethiopia: Evaluation Report. SOAS, ILO.
• Oya, Carlos (2022) ‘Doing labour regime research with large-scale surveys in Africa’. In: Baglioni, Elena, (eds.), Campling, Liam, (eds.), Coe, Neil M., (eds.) and Smith, Adrian, (eds.), Labour Regimes and Global Production. Newcastle: Agenda Publishing, pp 101-119. https://soas-repository.worktribe.com/output/450243/doing-labour-regime-research-with-large-scale-surveys-in-africa
• Pitts. H., Lombardozzi, L. (2024). “Class and Gender as Structural Inequalities in the UK: The Politics of Production and Social Reproduction”, in Joanie Willett and Arianna Giovannini (eds.) An Introduction to UK Politics Place, Pluralism, and Identities. Sage.
• Rizzo, M. (2025). ‘I Love Being My Own Boss (But the Work is Killing Me)’: Ride‐hail Drivers’ Contradictory Ideas about Work in African Cities. Development and Change.
• Skalidou, D. and Oya, C. (2024). Driving decent work: how effective are supply chain approaches? Research Report. Available at https://www.evidensia.eco/resources/4060/driving-decent-work-how-effective-are-supply-chain-approaches-a-systematic-review-of-evidence-in-agriculture-and-apparel/
• Stevano, S. (2022) "Classes of Working Women in Mozambique: An Integrated Framework to Understand Working Lives" Review of International Political Economy, 29 (6). pp. 1847-1869.
• Stevano, S., 2024, ‘Ultra‐Processed Food, Depletion, and Social Reproduction: A Conceptual Intervention’. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography (57), 2, pp 515-535
• Stevano, S., 2024, The Devaluation of Essential Work: An Assessment of the 2023 ILO Report. Development and Change (55), 4, pp 910-930.
• Tansel, C. B., & Tilley, L. (2024) Reproducing Socio-ecological Life from Below: Towards a Planetary Political Economy of the Global Majority. Review of International Studies, 50(3), 514-533.
• Tilley, L. (2024) Horizons of Liberation: Materialism, Ecology, and the Colonial Question. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 1-22.
• Trajectories of labour market transitions in the Indian economy (2025)
• Tsikata, D. & Ossome, L. (2024) Africa's 21st century feminist struggles: terrains, formations and politics. Feminist Africa, 5(1), 1–22.
• Tsikata, D., Prasad, A. and Yeros, P. (2024) Gender in Agrarian Transitions Liberation Perspectives from the South. Columbia University Press and Tulika Books. 

• Carlos Oya, Florian Schaefer and Weiwei Chen (2022) co-authored the report Management Workforce Localization and Skill Development in Ethiopia's Light Manufacturing. IDCEA Research Report, SOAS, University of London.  
• Carlos Oya, Florian Schaefer (2024) co-authored the report ONEILO-SIRAYE Programme Ethiopia: Evaluation Report. SOAS, ILO.
• Daphne Skalidou and Carlos Oya (2024) co-authored the research report Driving decent work: how effective are supply chain approaches? 
• Surbhi Kesar co-organised a workshop on "Labour, Informal Economy, and Structural Transformation under Post-Colonial Capitalism"
• Alessandra Mezzadri (2022- present) co-founded the Labour Transfer School (LTS) https://www.labourtransferschool.org/
• Alessandra Mezzadri (2022): Contribution to teaching in the Global Labour University module "Subordination and discrimination in GSCs: recognising diversity and building unity"
• Alessandra Mezzadri (2023) co-authored the ILO report The social life of industrial disputes: Exploring workers-centred industrial relations in India’s garment labour regime
• Carlos Oya leads the evaluation of the ILO Programme Advancing Decent Work and Inclusive Industrialization in Ethiopia 2019-23, with a particular focus on the Better Work component.
• Christopher Cramer (2022) teaching on alternative perspectives on development economics, African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics (APORDE) residential school, South Africa (chair of scientific committee).
• Jens Lerche: contribution to ILO Word in Freedom Programme. Output: Bosc, I., Lerche, J., Shah, A., Fajerman, M. and Wadhawan, N. (2022) "Understanding patterns of structural discrimination of migrant and other workers in some countries of South and West Asia" Geneva: ILO. 

• Coercion and Co-option: Strategies of Labour Control and Labour Survival in the Indian E-commerce Warehouses, An Amazon India Case Study (Suraj Telange, 2025)
• Digital Nigeria: Impacts of Digitisation and "Gigification" on the Nigerian Economy (Taylor Rockhill, 2025)
• Bringing Capital Back In: Labour Informalisation and Resistance in Contemporary Vietnam (Joseph Buckley, 2020)
• Stalled Transformations? First-Order Effects of Industrialization on Land and Labour in Selected Areas, India and Indonesia (Karishma Boroowa, 2021)
• Trade union responses to economic liberalisation in Ghana (Prince Asafu-Adjaye, 2021)
• Legal Resistance Against Authoritarian Legal Transplant: The Politics of the Rule of Law and the Legal Profession in Post-Umbrella Hong Kong (Eric Y.H. Lai, 2022)
• Going West – Industrial Relocation and Migrant Labour Unrest in Chengdu and Chongqing (Daniel Fuchs, 2020)