Massive appropriation of labor from the Global South enables high consumption in rich countries
The high levels of consumption enjoyed by wealthy countries in the Global North are only possible because of mass appropriation of labor from the population of the Global South. This is evidenced by research from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which indicates that this appropriation takes place through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains.
The new study, published in Nature Communications, measured the flows of labor embodied in traded goods around the world from 1995 to 2021. The results show that in 2021, the Global North imported 906 billion hours of embodied labor from the South while exporting only 80 billion hours in return. In other words, for every hour of labor the Global South imports from the Global North, they must export 11 hours to “pay” for it.
As a result, the countries of the Global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of labor from the Global South, across all skill levels and all sectors: mining, agriculture, manufacturing and services. The figure of 826 billion hours is more than the labor rendered by the entire workforce of the United States and Europe combined.
The wage value of this net-appropriated labor was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in 2021, in Northern prices. In other words, this is how much the appropriated labor would be worth if it was paid at prevailing Northern wages, with equal wages for equal work.
“These are staggering figures. It shows that very large quantities of value flow from the South to the North each year” says Jason Hickel, researcher at ICTA-UAB and the Department of Anthropology at the UAB. “The Global North grows rich by siphoning value out of the South.”
Unequal exchange occurs because of systematic price inequalities in the world economy. Powerful states and corporations in the Global North seek to compress wages and supply prices in the Global South, to obtain inputs and other goods more cheaply. Producers in the Global South are then forced to export more goods and services in order to buy any given level of imports. [Continue reading…]