DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group: Local labor struggles in global value chains
Project Summary
The DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group, led by Dr. Caroline Hambloch, investigates how smallholders and workers in the Global South navigate their often unequal integration into agricultural global value chains (GVCs). Focusing on the Philippines, Colombia, and Malawi, the project examines how different forms of value creation and capture influence smallholder and labor control, agency, and opportunities for more equitable outcomes. Combining labor regime analysis, labor agency, and agrarian political economy, the project examines the dynamic interplay between firm control and the agency of smallholders and workers across different contexts and scales. Adopting an emancipatory lens, it centers on how subordinate GVC actors formally and informally contest and reshape power relations within GVCs. The project also analyzes key mediating factors, such as land control and access, modes of coordination, and standards and certification to identify pathways toward empowerment in agricultural GVCs.
Ongoing Projects
Local labor struggles in global value chains: Control and agency of smallholders and farm workers in tobacco and cotton in Zimbabwe
Dr. Freedom Mazwi of the University of Zambia will join our junior research group as a TWAS-DFG Visiting Fellow for a three-month research stay from September to November 2025. In collaboration with Dr. Caroline Hambloch, Dr. Mazwi is developing a journal article on contract farming Zimbabwe’s tobacco and cotton sectors. The research will utilize a multi-scalar framework to explore how contract farming arrangements shape labor control and labor agency. It will focus on the interconnections of capital and labor agency across different scales, and how these interconnections shape the capacity of smallholders and workers to negotiate better conditions, assert their interests, and improve their outcomes within these sectors. The visit will also identify future areas of collaboration between Dr. Mazwi, the junior research group, and scholars from affiliated universities. This seeks to contribute to bridging the knowledge divide between Global North and Global South scholarship.
Latest News and Events
Center for Development Research (ZEF) Public Lecture – Control and Agency in Global Production Networks
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ISS African Development Roundtable – Current Social and Political Challenges across the African Continent
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The Team
Research Group Leader
Dr. Caroline Hambloch
PHDs
Luis Baquero - Colombia
Elise Kendall - Malawi
Jorma Apelt - Philippines
Visiting Fellow
Dr. Freedom Mazwi
Research Assistant
Julie Isabelle Sulser, jsulser@uni-bonn.de
Project-Partners
International partners
Dr. Helena Perez Nino
Helena Pérez Niño is an assistant professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is currently partnering with the DFG Emmy Noether Junior Research Group in research on labor regimes in oil palm frontiers with Caroline Hambloch and Carlo Arceo and co-editing a handbook on contract farming with Caroline Hambloch, Mark Vicol, Sudha Narayanan and Niels Fold. Her research focuses on the political economy of development and the social organization of production in agriculture, as well as the social impact of globalized agricultural markets. She has previously lectured at SOAS and the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge and has worked for UNICEF and UNHCR. Currently, she serves on the editorial board of Development and Change and is the co-founder of the Contract Farming Initiative research network.
Dr. Mark Vicol (Wageningen)
Dr. Mark Vicol is an Assistant Professor of Agrarian Sociology in the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University, where his research examines the everyday political economy of agrarian transformation. He is currently partnering with the EN Research group as a co-publisher of a handbook on contract farming with Dr. Caroline Hambloch, Dr. Helena Pérez Niño, Dr. Sudha Narayanan and Prof. Niels Fold. Dr. Vicol holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from the University of Sydney and is co-founder of the Contract Farming Initiative and co-coordinator of the Critical Agrarian Studies research cluster at Wageningen’s Centre for Space, Place and Society.
Prof. Niels Fold (Copenhagen)
Professor Niels Fold is a Professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, focusing on how global value chains shape rural livelihoods, settlement dynamics and regional development in the Global South. He has worked and published on several agro-industrial value chains in Ghana, Tanzania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Colombia, Malaysia, Nepal and Vietnam. He is currently collaborating with the EN Research Group as a co-publisher of a handbook on contract farming with Dr. Hambloch, Dr. Mark Vicol, Dr. Sudha Narayanan and Dr. Helena Pérez Niño. Prof. Fold is the former head of the “Environment and Society in the Global South” research group at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management and director of a Danish university consortium that supported research capacity development at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania.
Country Partners
Jairo Baquero Melo (previously Universidad del Rosario, now University of Florida)
Dr. Jairo Baquero Melo is the Colombia country partner for the project. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies and holds a Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on socio-environmental conflicts, land struggles, and peacebuilding in Colombia, through political ecology and agrarian studies. Dr. Baquero has published in journals such as the Journal of Agrarian Change and Current Sociology, and edited the book Construir la Paz en las Fronteras Internas (Peacebuilding at Internal Borders, Universidad del Rosario, 2024).
Michael Chasukwa (University of Malawi)
Dr. Michael Chasukwa is the project's Malawi country partner. He is a Professor and the Head of the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Malawi. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Extraordinary Professor at the University of North West in South Africa. He holds a PhD in Political Science (Political Economy and Development) from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. He was also a member of the Future Agricultures Consortium, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leeds. His research focuses on development cooperation, decentralization, and the politics of agricultural transformation. Professor Michael Chasukwa was part of the Tilitonse Core Advisory group and has consulted with international and local organizations, including the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). He has also published in several journals including the International Journal of Public Administration, the Journal of Peasant Studies, and the Journal of Asian and African Studies.
Larry Digal (University of the Philippines Mindanao)
Dr. Larry N. Digal is the project's Philippines country partner. He is a professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of the Philippines, Mindanao. His research areas include the economics of sustainable agricultural value chains and agri-food market systems and industrial organization of agricultural markets. Dr. Digal holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Sydney, an MS in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University and a BS in Agriculture, with a major in Agri-economics and Agri-finance, from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños. He leads the agri-aqua value chain laboratory based at the University of the Philippines Mindanao.
