Project description
Exploring illicit labour in the global photovoltaic sector
The intersection of climate change mitigation and illicit labour presents significant challenges in the modern world, giving rise to growing societal concerns including energy insecurity, toxic waste generation, and labour exploitation. Surprisingly, labour studies have only given limited systemic attention to this complex relationship. The ERC-funded illicitLABOUR project is adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to examine the production networks within the global photovoltaic industry. It seeks to expose the less visible aspects of the green energy sector, particularly in China, Ghana, and India. The project’s objective is to gain insights into the ecological governance implications arising from these connections. It pushes the boundaries of labour studies and contributes to a deeper understanding of issues related to risk, vulnerability, and mitigation.
Objective
illicitLABOUR pioneers a study of the linkages between climate change mitigation and illicit economies and the resulting implications for ecological governance. This comparative and interdisciplinary project goes beyond the current state-of-the-art research in three significant ways. First, by investigating global photovoltaic industry production networks it reveals the dark sides of the green energy sector in three geographical sites (China, Ghana, and India). Second, it advances new theoretical perspectives on risk, vulnerability, and mitigation considering the interplay between the green energy sector and the illicit economy. Third, it attempts a transformative breakthrough by developing a ‘cultural political ecology’ framework that brings cultural economy and political ecology together, pushing labour studies frontiers forward.
The research will focus on several core questions: How do we explain the economic, political, and cultural processes linking illicit labour and ecological governance? Which illicit labour regimes in mining and manufacturing processes sustain solar panel production? How do informal energy markets work? What are the social and environmental challenges raised by end-of-life photovoltaic modules? How can we understand the illicit-ecology nexus in light of these processes? And, finally, how can this analysis reveal new ways to provide clean and affordable energy for all?
Climate change mitigation and illicit labour are two major challenges of modern times, whose interconnection poses growing concerns for society, such as energy insecurity, toxic waste production, and labour exploitation. Yet this relationship has surprisingly received limited systemic attention in labour studies to date. Through an analysis of the global photovoltaic industry, a major climate change mitigation sector, illicitLABOUR casts light on those neglected actors, practices, and processes that operate in the shadow of sustainable development.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecology
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energyphotovoltaic
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
00185 Roma
Italy