Title: Hidden Labour: Connecting Production and Social Reproduction from Cotton to Garment
PhD Supervisor: Elisabeth Prügl
This research examines the relations of production and social reproduction that constitute the economy in which we labour and live, through an on-the-ground study of work and daily life at the intersection of cotton agriculture and apparel in Turkey. It draws on ethnographic methods, including participant observation and interviews, to expose how supply chain capitalism free rides on hidden activities of provisioning and caregiving and how the mundane needs of social reproduction in turn shape production and openings for transformation.
I am a doctoral candidate in International Relations/Political Science and a researcher at the Gender Centre for the project Gendering Survival from the Margins, where I study issues of gender, labour and governance in the globalized neoliberal economy. I hold degrees from the Graduate Institute in Development Studies (MA) and in Economics (BSc honours) from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. Next to my doctoral research, I am also examining perceptions of COVID-era disruptions and workers’ demands in garment sector factories in Indonesia. In previous research, I have written about the role of women’s promotion groups in sustaining survival and solidarity around sites of natural resource extraction.
Social reproduction, women’s labour and systems of life: A conversation, with Marianna Fernandes, Asanda Benya, Saniye Dedeoğlu, Alessandra Mezzadri and Elisabeth Prügl. Dialogues in Human Geography (online 30 May 2023): 1-11.
‘Le fléau de la soude caustique’: Bauxite Refining, Social Reproduction, and the Role of Women’s Promotion Groups. In The Lives of Extraction. Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement, 15.1 (online 22 May 2023). (Eds.) Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer and Asanda Benya. Geneva, Boston: Graduate Institute Publications, Brill-Nijhoff.