(Re)Contextualizing Organizing Inequities: The Communicative Production of Worker Vulnerability in Global Supply Chains

Global supply chains are the infrastructure of contemporary capitalism and produce, define, and determine the vulnerabilities of labor. Yet much communication inquiry into work conditions does not position either risk or vulnerabilities of labor with regard to these global chains. For organizational communication studies, supply chains also offer an opportunity to recontextualize work inequities and vulnerabilities by moving beyond container metaphors of organizing and single-case studies. This article, therefore, draws upon multiple ethnographic projects conducted in India and China to examine the vulnerabilities faced by various marginalized worker groups enmeshed in global supply chains to identify three communicative conditions that fundamentally shape these vulnerabilities: fluidity, visibility, and disarticulation. Fluidity is explored through a study of fast-fashion workers in China, a primary sourcing hub for global mega-platforms such as Shein and Temu. Visibility is examined via onion supply chains in India, focusing on women whose labor is collectively essential but individually disposable. Finally, disarticulation highlights how garment workers in global cotton supply chains in India are severed from their communities, livelihoods, and each other. We argue that analyzing worker vulnerability necessitates attention to all three communicative conditions, advocating for the use of multi-sited ethnographies as a means to grasp these vulnerabilities.