Geographies of Production II: Fashion, Creativity and Fragmented Labour

Progress in Human Geography 33(1) (2009) pp. 65–73

Progress reports

Geographies of production II: fashion, creativity and fragmented labour

Suzanne Reimer*

School of Geography, University of Southampton, Highﬁ eld, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

Key words: creative industries, fashion, labour, low-paid work, social reproduction.

I Introduction power relations are considered within a In a 2006 review essay, Hadjimichalis suggests range of recent work, with the particular that economic geographers’ current interests purpose of foregrounding assessments of in factors such as knowledge, social capital, the position of labour. I begin by examining trust and reciprocity have obscured under- accounts of the geographies of fashion and standings of the contemporary capitalist clothing production. Early exponents of a space-economy: ‘fashion system’ approach, Fine and Leopold (1993: 93) emphasized that fashion was Even among writers of the Left, the well- somewhat of a ‘hybrid subject’: research on, being of workers and local residents has been for example, the dynamics of clothing produc- replaced by a discourse that talks exclusively of the well-being of firms and regions tion often appeared to be segregated from (Hadjimichalis, 2006: 700) studies of fashion as a cultural phenomenon. More recently, growing emphasis on its In a similar vein Hadjimichalis and Hudson ‘design-intensive’ nature has led the fashion (2006) contend that particularly within re- industry increasingly to be considered, in gional development circles interest in ‘net- both academic and policy circles, as a key worked relationships’ has drawn attention component of the creative and cultural indus- away from ‘asymmetric power structures, tries more generally (DCMS, 1998; Scott, exclusion and lack of accountability’ in fav- 2001; McRobbie, 2004; Evans and Smith, our of a focus upon ‘the efﬁ ciency, adapt- 2006). Yet the work of fashion production – ability and flexibility of networked forms, including design work as well as manufacture – assuming self-organization and collaborative continues to be labour-intensive, low-paid and forms of action’ (2006: 868, 869; see also often relatively insecure. Christopherson and Clark, 2007). In the second section, I consider some In this second of three reviews, I want of the recent literature on creative indus- to reﬂ ect upon the extent to which unequal tries, once again with the explicit intent of

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© 2008 SAGE Publications DOI: 10.1177/0309132508090444 66 Progress in Human Geography 33(1) foregrounding the position of creative workers. example, analyses of production organization Ironically enough, although the extent and (Hassler, 2005), state policies and regulatory nature of ‘the creative class’ has been heavily practices (Pickles, 2006; Tewari, 2006; debated (Florida, 2002; 2005a; 2005b; cf. Thomsen, 2007) or more generalized accounts Peck, 2005; Markusen, 2006), there has been of fi rm upgrading (Neidik and Gereffi , 2006; relatively little detailed consideration of the Pickles et al., 2006). At a general level, fi rm experiences and conditions of workers in cre- upgrading – or ‘moving to higher-value activities ative sectors. Nonetheless, it is beginning to in global supply chains’ (Bair and Gereffi, become apparent that self-employment and 2003: 147) – is often implicitly assumed to be non-traditional work patterns in the creative benefi cial for all involved, including labour. industries can place increasing pressure on Moving towards more ‘design-intensive’ pro- social and familial relationships and the organ- duction, for example, is generally assumed ization of daily life. In the fi nal section of the to be a positive goal for a range of local and report, I approach the issue of links between national clothing industries (Evans and Smith, home and work life through a survey of recent 2006; Tokatli, 2007a; 2007b; 2008; Leslie and accounts of low-wage and migrant workers. Brail, 2007). Yet, as Bair and Gereffi (2003: 149) note, ‘the upgrading processes of fi rms II Producing fashion in terms of shifts along or between commod- Interest in the geographies of fashion and ity chains is an important, but not a suffi cient clothing production shows no signs of abat- condition for ensuring positive development ing. In part, of course, the clothing/apparel/ outcomes’. In particular, the consequences fashion industries continue to attract at- for workers may not be clear from more tention because of the fascinating global general discussions of upgrading at industry dynamism in networks of production, with level (2003: 149). commentators initially drawing inspiration Knorringa and Pegler (2006: 474) have from Fröbel et al.’s (1980) early study of argued that if improvements to labour con- transformations in the former West German ditions do occur alongside firm upgrading textile and garment industry. A more recent ‘they are usually limited to [the] initial phases – and again highly familiar – point of concep- of insertion in GVCs’ (global value chains). tual departure was provided by Gereffi’s Specifi c groups of skilled workers within cer- (1994) distinction between buyer-driven and tain fi rms may temporarily benefi t, but the supplier-driven commodity chains, leading more general trend among developing country commentators to regard the textile and ap- suppliers is one of downward pressure on parel industry as an archetypical example wages. Albeit that they do not specifi cally refer of the former category. Within the last few to the clothing/apparel industries, Knorringa years, geographers have begun to situate and Pegler’s (2006) arguments are strongly narratives of clothing production within wider resonant with van Dooren’s (2006) account networks, positioning fashion as an ‘aes- of jeans production in the Laguna region in thetically based industry’ (Hauge, 2007: 14). Mexico. As the region became more closely Part of the explanation for sustained in- drawn into international production net- terest in clothing and apparel production works following the 1994 North American may well relate to the industry’s important Free Trade Agreement, employment in jeans economic role within many countries, particu- manufacturing increased dramatically. Local larly as an employer (Tewari, 2006: 2325). producers came under increasing pressure Having said that, the specific position of from US buyers to reorganize production labour within global networks of production in order to achieve higher quality levels and has tended to receive less attention within shorter lead times. Although workers saw recent narratives in comparison with, for some improvements in pay, the introduction Suzanne Reimer: Geographies of production 67 of modular production systems acted to frag- Interest in ‘the extent to which fi rms have ment the labour force and their work pace was been able to upgrade production into higher signifi cantly intensifi ed (van Dooren, 2006). value and more “creative” design-oriented activ- Further, even at the height of what transpired ity’ (Evans and Smith, 2006: 2254, emphasis to be a short-lived ‘boom’, garment industry added) has drawn analysts of the fashion and wages did not reach levels which would en- clothing industries into debates surrounding able workers to support a household (van the relative importance of the cultural and Dooren, 2006). creative industries. For some authors, fashion Empirically, accounts of retailer/buyer is seen as the quintessential example (among power in the clothing industries have most cultural product industries) of the infl uence often focused upon the production of goods of aesthetic, semiotic or ‘semaphoric’ value destined for the US market. By contrast, high and content (Santagata, 2004). In the con- levels of retail concentration – often seen to text of a study of Australian Fashion Week, signal a power imbalance between retailers Weller (2008) positions fashion as a ‘cultural and their suppliers – may be relatively less commodity’, located within value fl ows which discernible in the European context, although cross-cut garment production, fashion shows there is some indication of growing retailer and fashion image (video and photography) power in France and Spain (Palpacuer, 2006; production. Hauge (2007) emphasizes the Tokatli, 2008). Once again, it would be inter- importance of symbolic and ‘immaterial’ esting to learn more about the explicit im- value in Swedish fashion production; while plications of such patterns for labour terms Larner et al. (2007) critically evaluate the posi- and conditions. Tokatli’s (2008) discussion tioning of the New Zealand ‘designer fashion of the Spanish retailer Zara, for example, is industry’ as having the potential to revamp suggestive: she notes that the retention of the nation’s ‘international image … and thus ‘fashion-oriented’ production within western to foster additional international investment’ Europe in the early 2000s relied upon low-wage (2007: 381). suppliers in Galicia and northern Portugal. Citing Forbes magazine, Toklati reports that III Producing creativity: creative labour ‘seamstresses … received something less Accounts of the geographies of creative than half the average industrial wage’ and production have been – in the main – pre- that fi rms may well have employed staff ‘off occupied with processes of clustering and fi rm the books’ – ie, without paying social security agglomeration, with the nature of knowledge premiums and taxes (2008: 32). More re- flows and with the organizational impli- cently, Zara has turned to source ‘complicated cations of networking and project working and highly tailored fast fashion items’ from across increasingly porous fi rm boundaries ‘upgraded’ suppliers in Morocco, Bulgaria (for reviews, see Gibson and Kong, 2005; and Turkey, as well as relying upon a range Reimer et al., 2008). Emergent understandings of low cost south east Asian fi rms (Tokatli, of cultural and creative economies have been 2008: 35). Thus while the use of proximate, less directly concerned with labour as a main market-responsive European suppliers ini- focus of analysis.1 Clearly, the presence or tially might have been viewed as a more absence of a ‘creative class’ is taken – by some positive – or at least an alternative – strategy – to be a de facto measure of the creative to outsourcing to ‘cheap labour locations’, in economy (Florida, 2002), yet analysts seem hindsight it seems somewhat naïve to have to have been relatively less interested in the assumed that the production of high-quality, actual terms and conditions of employment high-fashion clothing would necessarily in- within creative sectors. Florida’s critics have volve the employment of well-remunerated raised questions about the nature of creative labour (Tokatli, 2008). work: 68 Progress in Human Geography 33(1)

the Creative Class seek out tolerant, diverse the United States – including performing and open communities, rich in the kind of artists, musicians, writers and visual artists amenities that allow them precariously to – provides a useful window onto a largely maintain a work-life balance, together with experiential intensity, in the context of … understudied group of workers within the demanding work schedules. (Peck, 2005: 745) creative sector (Markusen, 2006; Markusen and Schrock, 2006). In contrast to Florida’s However, as Rantisi et al. (2006: 1795) note ‘super-creative core’, who ‘disproportionately in a guest editorial to a special issue on the work and live in suburbs where homogeneity creative economy, ‘although many of the and low density are highly valued’, artists are papers provide insight into labour processes likely to be relatively less affl uent; may have in the new creative economy, the opportun- more diverse ethnic backgrounds; and play ities and challenges that workers confront ‘more active roles in their neighbourhoods’ merit further analysis’ (see also Scott, 2007). (Markusen, 2006: 1923, 1937). Some commentators have been sharply Although the consequences of project- critical of terms and conditions of labour based working for fi rms and industries have across the creative industries. Drawing upon been of central concern to many analysts of observations of the British context, McRobbie the creative and cultural sectors, the impact (2002; 2004) and Oakley (2004; 2006) have upon labour has been less fully explored. By been particularly concerned about the impact their very nature, of course, projects are tem- of the sector’s dependency upon ‘network porary systems, positioning many workers sociality’. Precisely because – as is often sug- within highly insecure labour market struc- gested – access to social networks determines tures, both over the short and long term. entry into and advancement within creative New media and design work is seen to be sectors, unequal power relations have the characteristic in this regard (Christopherson, potential to create sharp patterns of labour 2004; 2006; Perrons, 2004; Damarin, 2006; market exclusion and division (Oakley, Vinodrai, 2006). On a month-to-month basis 2006: 265). Highly rewarded key ‘creative’ individuals must utilize skills acquired indi- individuals are disconnected from a large vidually and draw upon personal networks in aspiring pool of lower-earning, often self- order to ‘get by’; while through their working employed workers (Oakley, 2004; see also lifespan project workers ‘have unclear career McRobbie, 1998). In the UK it is notable that paths’ (Christopherson, 2004: 546). the creative and cultural industries workforce While some analysts have tended to em- is predominantly white (Oakley, 2006: 264). phasize the self-reflexivity involved in the While gender divisions across all subsector cultural industries, highlighting the individual groupings may be ‘less stark’, women form a choices and life project management possibil- minority in advertising and design, for example ities afforded to the creative entrepreneur (Oakley, 2006; see also Design Council, (Banks et al., 2000; Allen, 2007), others are less 2005). Within the fi lm production workforce, sanguine about the potentially progressive women are concentrated within lower-paying nature of creative work. As McRobbie (2002: occupational groups – and also receive lower 526) has argued, ‘there is an irony in that along- levels of remuneration ‘than men in equivalent side the assumed openness of the [creative] age and occupation brackets’ (Oakley, 2006: network, the apparent embrace of non- 264, emphasis in original). hierarchical working practices, the various For Markusen (2006), such disaggregation fl ows and fl uidities … there are quite rigid of the ‘creative class’ matters because specifi c closures and exclusions’. Nixon and Crewe groups of workers may well have different (2004) emphasize that precisely because characteristics and play different roles within the creative industries have been held up as cities. Her work on artistic communities in positive models for work and employment Suzanne Reimer: Geographies of production 69

– not least within policy circles – it is important IV Low-paid work and migrant labour to disrupt such narratives. Their account Feminist geographical work has of course of UK magazine and advertising workers, argued for some time that a reconceptual- for example, outlines the troubling extent ization of what historically have been held to to which ‘strident forms of masculinity and be separate categories – work and home – is homosociability’ had become a central part essential to understanding the geographies of of work cultures in these creative industries production and labour markets (Hanson and (2004: 143). Pratt, 1995; McDowell, 2001; 2006; McDowell The predominant focus of accounts of et al., 2006a). While Jarvis and Pratt’s (2006) the creative and cultural industries upon analysis draws together the relationships the US and UK context might not, perhaps, between production and reproduction for be surprising (see Kong et al., 2006). In this ‘apparently secure workers’ (p. 338), other light it is interesting to discover that that commentators have foregrounded the lives one of the apparently exemplary character- of working-class households. In a study of istics of the creative industries – project Wythenshawe, South Manchester, Ward working – does not always and everywhere et al.’s (2007) interviewees predominantly denote unstable and short-term employ- formed part of ‘dual low-income and one and ment: ‘in Sweden and Germany, by contrast, a half low-income households’ (p. 323).2 new media employees tend to be full-time Paralleling patterns within advanced indus- employees and to work under longer-term trial economies more broadly (McDowell, employment contracts even when they are 2006: 829), responsibilities for social reworking on projects’ (Christopherson, 2004: production were undertaken predominantly 555; see also Dahlström and Hermelin, 2007). by mothers who worked ‘medium-to-long Geographies of creative production thus part-time hours’ (Ward et al., 2007: 323). can be seen to be shaped by regulatory and Ward and colleagues (2007) make an im- governance systems at the national level – portant political point regarding the position including the relative responsibilities of lab- of low-paid workers within contemporary our and employers for skill development and economies and societies more generally. industry sustainability. They suggest that while an oft-cited shift Implicit in many mentions of the ‘long to ‘knowledge work’ – including employ- hours culture’ (McRobbie, 2002: 526) of the ment in the creative and cultural sectors creative and cultural sectors is the suggestion identified above – has been the focus of that such working practices are inimical to much attention it is in fact the labour of ‘less the functioning of relationships which may glamorous’ households: stand outside paid employment – such as the family. Jarvis and Pratt (2006) take such a that makes urban economies function. [Such labour includes the work of] the security situation as the central focus of their study guards protecting the refurbished finance of San Francisco households engaged in new fi rms in revitalized urban cores; the cleaners media work. They emphasize what they call dusting the offices of the web designers the ‘hidden costs of extensifi cation’ – that is, whose work is celebrated in narratives in the spatial and temporal overfl owing of work ‘local’ ‘cultural’ economies; the carers for the parents and the children of the well-paid into and out of the household. Within a sector accountants and lawyers of city-centre fi rms. that frequently requires workers to be ‘always (Ward et al., 2007: 313) on’, Jarvis and Pratt (2006) illuminate the diffi culties posed for dual-income households Such an argument resonates strongly with in seeking to manage the social and economic another collaborative research project obligations of working and domestic lives. focusing upon low-paid workers in London 70 Progress in Human Geography 33(1)

(May et al., 2007; Datta et al., 2007). A stark one of the most notable experiences was divide has emerged between high-earning the relatively high number of migrants (39% Londoners and ‘a new ‘reserve army of of surveyed workers) who had dependent labour’ … a signifi cant part of which consists children living abroad (Datta et al., 2007). of foreign-born workers’ (May et al., 2007: The circumstances which appear to have 153). At one level this division might appear compelled such parenting at a distance to parallel older accounts of the dynamics clearly raise important ethical questions for of ‘global cities’ (eg, Sassen, 1991) in which us all: as May et al. (2007) suggest, ‘London’s the need for ‘servicing work’ was seen to be labour market is now more obviously than concomitant with the growth of producer ever shaped by the opportunities that do or services and the expansion of elite workers in do not exist for making a living and a life in managerial and professional jobs. However, Lesotho and Lithuania’ (p. 163). May and colleagues assert that London’s It is striking how many different meta- low-paid workers – who now are predomin- phors are deployed in attempts to capture antly a migrant labour force – play a crucial the ways in which women and men seek to role ‘in keeping the city as a whole “working”’ sustain themselves and their families in the (2007: 161, emphasis added). The employ- context of downward pressures on pay; in- ment status of low-paid migrant labour was creasingly constrained time schedules (related, not informal: 86% of surveyed workers for example, to difficulties of transport or had written contracts of employment; 95% working schedules), and/or the demands of received pay slips and 94% paid tax and both waged and unwaged work. One of the National Insurance contributions, further most persistent has been the notion of ‘getting emphasizing the centrality – rather than by’, perhaps best known since its use by marginality – of such women and men to sociologist Ray Pahl (1984) over two decades London’s economy (May et al., 2007). ago. Ward et al. (2007) write of ‘a constrained In a companion paper, Datta et al. (2007) juggling act’ (p. 319) and of the ‘choreography reflect upon the ways in which low-paid of everyday activities’ (p. 323) performed migrant workers in London seek to ‘get by’ by households. Datta et al. (2007: 405, 409) at an individual and household level. Again, suggest that existing literature on ‘coping the necessity of drawing connections be- strategies’ might be reworked to consider tween production and reproduction is em- households’ efforts as ‘tactics’, drawing upon phasized in stories of workers’ experiences Williams (2006) use of de Certeau (1984). in ‘dealing with labour market segmentation, At times, metaphors can appear as com- changing household economies and social monsense, ‘it just happens’ analogies, which exclusion’ (2007: 409). Alongside practices may potentially have the effect of naturalizing such as multiple job-holding, informal child- and normalizing households’ responses. While care arrangements and tight household the notion that, for example, ‘we just do what budgeting, many migrants also were required we can’ acceptably refl ects the sentiments to share housing with others, predominantly of interviewees, it may be necessary for outside their family group. Given the extra- researchers to build sharper critiques into ordinarily high cost of housing in London, the their accounts. That is, characterizations of latter point is highly suggestive of the need ‘coping’ or ‘getting by’ may be insuffi ciently to hold together in analysis the entwined forceful in arguing for circumstances under associations connecting work, home and which workers’ lives could be made better. local community. Further, global flows of Datta et al. emphasize, for example, that remittances can be seen to shape geograph- migrant workers’ ‘tactics’ are often ‘reactive, ies of production and reproduction across fragmented and fragile’ (2007: 425). It may be increasingly diverse spatial scales. Perhaps strategically important to seek to denaturalize Suzanne Reimer: Geographies of production 71 terminology such as ‘getting by’ – particularly Fine, B. and Leopold, E. 1993: The world of consumption. in order to make political arguments for London: Routledge. 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