(1) The increasing reliance of capital on global supply chains over the past three decades has dislocated both people and labor processes, drawing attention to the ways in which these chains function to discipline labor and undermine organized labor resistance. Considerably less attention has been paid to the ways in which labor value and the conversion processes linking labor and capital have been reconfigured in these supply chains. In this presentation, I draw on ethnographic research conducted from 2004-2012 among Italian firms engaged in manufacturing and distributing textiles and clothing in China, tracing the shift in the Italian firms' goal of procuring low-cost materials and labor to selling their products in the Chinese market. I situate my analysis of the transnational relations of production among the Italian and Chinese firm owners, managers and workers engaged in these collaborative ventures in both the contemporary structure of global supply chains and the historical trajectories that led Italians to them. I show how the Italian national legacy of capital-labor relations both set the stage for the outsourcing of manufacturing to China and shaped these firms' investment and labor management strategies. As Chinese consumers became increasingly crucial to the European fashion industry, Italian firms reorganized their production and distribution processes to live up to the prestige-value of Made in Italy. This brought about an ironic twist in the fetishism of commodities in which the proclaimed immaterial value of Italian commodities became embodied in Italian managers, defining their labor value and structuring their relations with workers. The dislocation of Italian managers, in addition, altered the processes through which labor was converted into capital in Italian industrial districts, hardening the boundary between capital and labor and altering the dynamic structure of capital-labor relations in Italy.

(2) En février 2014, se tenaient dans l’usine occupée de Fralib, les premières rencontres internationales de l’Économie des Travailleurs. Ce mouvement développé en Amérique Latine dans les années 2000, s’appuie sur le combat de travailleurs-euses pour la réappropriation des moyens de production en opposition à l’arrêt de leurs activités, sous les pressions des logiques de marché. Fralib est de ces expériences. Fermée en septembre 2010 pour être délocalisée, l’usine rouvre après 1336 jours de lutte contre la multinationale Unilever, sous la forme d’une coopérative et sous contrôle des salarié-e-s.
A partir de mon travail ethnographique mené au cour de ces années de lutte, j’explore les dynamiques de transformation des rapports de production à l’intérieur de l’usine, mais également en amont et en aval. Je montre notamment que l’imaginaire coopératif, nouvel horizon des salarié-e-s à partir de 2011, et un vecteur décisif de la transformation des relations collectives au cour des années de lutte. Loin d’être immatériel, il se fonde sur des expériences concrètes du travail sous Unilever et de la lutte. Finalement, l’économie des travailleurs se trouve à la croisée des logiques de marché, et d’un mouvement de relocalisation de l’économie.