The Transnational Chains of Super-exploitation in the 21st Century: the Experiences of Haitian Workers in Brazil

This thesis discusses the super-exploitation of Haitian workers in Brazil. It refers to the emerging patterns of south-south migration and the incorporation of international migrant labour into the strategies for economic development in the Global South. The study makes an innovative contribution to the conceptualisation of super-exploitation in contemporary capitalism, particularly in relation to the field of social reproduction.
The concept of super-exploitation has been a theoretical alternative to northern centric conceptual frameworks of employment relations and its relationship with strategies for economic development in the Global South. The conventional definition is that super-exploitation drives the wages of workers below the amount necessary for their social reproduction. While this argument is technically correct, the literature has undertheorized the way in which super-exploitation has occurred in Southern countries and how international migration represents a new chapter in the expansion of super-exploitation. This thesis argues that the definition of super-exploitation can be refined by a better understanding of the social composition of the workforce in these countries, in other words, by understanding the specific historical and contextual conditions which shape the social reproduction of super-exploited workers.
This thesis, therefore, aims to re-conceptualise super-exploitation by exploring the multidimensional dynamics and the patterns of social reproduction it assumes in the experiences of a particular group of workers, migrants from Haiti in Brazil. Forty-two semi-structured interviews were collected with Haitian migrants in Brazil and analysed alongside immigration and labour market statistics. Three key themes emerged from those interviews and were organised into three chapters: citizenship, transnational network relations and employment. Findings showed that Haitians are super-exploited in Brazil because their social reproduction is overdetermined by a constellation of political-citizenship and community/networking relationships which, although crucial for the survival of Haitians, contribute to their subordination to super-exploitation. Therefore, super-exploitation can be defined more accurately as a combination of economic and non-economic forces that entangle productive-reproductive-exploitative relationships, thereby shaping the dependence of workers on wages below the value necessary for their social reproduction. In showing these entanglements, this study offers a better understanding of how south-south migration relates to the emerging forms of labour exploitation in the 21st century in Latin America.