Industrial restructuring and manufacturing homework: immigrant women in the UK clothing industry

This article argues that recent government and other studies have failed to identify the proliferation of home-work and small sweat shops in the clothing industry in the UK. Swasti Mitter dismisses the argument that recent changes in labour/output ratios can be explained by increased labour productivity in the clothing industry, suggesting instead that an increasing proportion of output is being shifted from factories to the unregulated sector whose workers do not appear in official estimates of the labour force. She argues that the trends in retail organisation and competition have led to subcontracting as a rational strategy for cost minimisation as has occurred in other European countries, particularly in Italy. And that the insecurity of immigrant women within the British state, together with their position within their own communities makes them a suitable source of labour for the 37 unregulated sector where they are vulnerable to exploitative working conditions and pay with little recourse to protection either from the state or trade unions.