Distorted linkages and labor devaluation: an exploration of automotive value chain-driven ‘development’ in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

ABSTRACT Contrary to the optimistic narratives that see in foreign direct investment and global value chains (GVC) potential levers to generate dynamics of strengthened local patterns of industrial development, this article analyses the case of the automotive industry in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico) to demonstrate that local connection to GVCs has rather deepened dysfunctional relationship to globalized production/supply chains and labor degradation. Domestically, Ciudad Juárez’s auto production linkages are fully controlled by transnational corporations underpinning conditions of an export-driven despotic labor regime: sustained long-term wage precariousness, and intensive and exhaustive working conditions inside manufacturing plants.