Nothing to lose but their chains : Uneven Development, Labour Exploitation and Resistance in Morocco and Tunisia's automotive industry

The thesis asks what the key dynamics are that shape Morocco and Tunisia’s integration into transnational production networks in the automotive industry—an ongoing regionalizing sector often studied as a driver of technology spillovers and, therefore, as promoting economic and social upgrading, provided there is institutional and policy commitment. Moving beyond mainstream Global Value Chains (GVC) approaches and adopting a Marxist lens on capitalist uneven development and labour relations, I instead explore how, in spite of significantly varying outcomes, the incorporation of both cases into the EU-centred car industry reproduces a dependent and peripheral position within global capitalism, structured by the monopoly power of coreheadquartered transnational corporations (TNCs) and geopolitical hierarchies. This is in turn mediated by domestic state agency, which coalesces power blocs that consent to dependency and enforces labour regimes that secure the conditions for the increasing exploitation necessary to link up with TNCs - most notably through policies purposefully fostering vast labour surpluses, such as land dispossession and outmigration criminalizaton; elevated precarity; and despotic labour management. Despite these processes, which crucially subordinate, fragment, and ultimately weaken workers, I argue that integration into a strategic GVC such as automotive improves labour workplace power. Contrary to mainstream confidence in social upgrading through institutional adaptation, I thus stress the potential for class struggle as a countervailing force against super-exploitation in global production. Yet I also consider capital’s capacity to react labour resistance, while refraining from treating unions as an analytical proxy for the working class or as unambiguous instances of workers’ power. Rather, I scrutinize how, to different degrees and depending on specific path dependencies in labour politics and social conflict, they may also contribute to stabilizing labour regimes by playing the role of mass integrative apparatuses. Leveraging more than 50 interviews collected through extensive fieldwork and developing a comparison of relevant case studies through a heterodox perspective that bridges political economy and class dynamics, the thesis critically contributes to contemporary discussions on uneven development, labour inequalities, and resistance in global production.