Trifurcated workplace regimes among Chinese clothing multinationals in Ethiopia

Studies on Chinese workplace regimes in Africa have evolved from treating them as uniformly exploitative to unpacking a far more variegated landscape. However, existing analyses often treat local workers as an undifferentiated mass. This article challenges such views by examining Chinese apparel multinationals in Ethiopia's Hawassa Special Economic Zone through an Integrated Workplace Regime (IWR) framework that theorises workplace regimes as outcomes co-constructed through micro-level struggles between workers and management, mediated by institutional forces from capital's home, host, and buyer countries. Analysing empirical data collected through interviews and group discussions with 99 informants involving officials, management, workers, and community members, we identified a trifurcated structure of employment relations within the same firms: a dormitory regime for expatriate workers; responsible autonomy for core local workers; and market despotism for peripheral local workers. By foregrounding the reproductive sphere and buyer-country dynamics in the IWR framework, which are often overlooked in existing frameworks, this study advances theorisation of workplace regimes in global production networks and offers new empirical depth to debates on Chinese capital in Africa.