La doble moralidad: Child labor in the fashion industry supply chain in Mexico

• In Event: Children's Rights and the Politics of Child Labor

Abstract

Child and forced labor in the fashion supply industry has been seen as a problem of countries such as Bangladesh or India. Even when the presence of child and forced labor in Mexico was denied, pressure at the international level increased the support of policies aimed to erradicate its presence in the fashion supply chain. This pressure led to the emergence of audits done by transnational brands to ensure that their supply chains were free of child and forced labor.
Faced by a growing presence of small workshops that employ child labor, large maquiladoras had a hard time trying to reduce their production costs. In order to keep themselves competitive, large maquiladoras began to diversify their supply chain generating two types of production chains: one that includes child labor and another that do not; and to develop a double morality in which at the same time that they proclaim zero tolerance for child and forced labor, they turn a "blind eye" to the hiring of minors in the supply chains they use for national brands.
In this paper we analyze the context that allows this double morality to take place. Starting from field work in maquila zones of clothing and footwear production in Mexico and quantitative data from the ENOE (2017), we analyze those factors that facilitate the presence of child and forced labor in a context that rejects this type of practices.

Author

• Patricia Murrieta Cummings, Universidad de Guadalajara