Subaltern Labor in the New Transnational Legal Cannabis Market: From the Global South to the Global North

• Grant number: 24/16113-3
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: May 13, 2025
• End date: May 23, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Paulo José dos Reis Pereira
• Grantee: Paulo José dos Reis Pereira
• Visiting researcher: Robert Chlala
• Visiting researcher institution: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Sociais. Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project examines the dynamics of subaltern labor in the emerging transnational legal cannabis market, focusing on the relationships between the Global South and the Global North. As cannabis legalization progresses in various jurisdictions, large transnational corporations benefit from the expansion of this market, consolidating a new global division of labor. Workers from the Global South often occupy marginal positions in production and supply chains, while the Global North reaps the greatest economic and regulatory benefits. The study aims to map working conditions, forms of exploitation, and power structures that emerge from this process, employing a critical and comparative approach, analyzing how these dynamics perpetuate historical and structural inequalities.The project is theoretically grounded in Post-Colonial Theory and Subaltern Studies, engaging with authors such as Gayatri Spivak, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Aníbal Quijano. Spivak addresses the silencing of subaltern voices, enabling reflection on agricultural workers from the Global South in the cannabis market. Chakrabarty discusses how capitalist modernity distorts ways of life in global peripheries. Quijano explores the coloniality of power, showing how colonial relations still shape labor in contemporary capitalism. The project also engages with Ananya Roy and Saskia Sassen, who analyze the exclusion of subaltern voices and the unequal integration of the Global South into global markets. These perspectives help illuminate the new context of labor in the emerging transnational cannabis market.Methodologically, the project adopts a qualitative and exploratory approach, seeking to map the initial working conditions and power structures in the transnational cannabis market. It is structured into three main phases: the first involves an extensive literature review on the legal cannabis market, subaltern labor, and colonial and post-colonial dynamics, along with the analysis of public policy documents, regulations, and market data. The second phase consists of conducting comparative case studies in two representative contexts, one in the Global South (possibly Uruguay or Colombia) and one in the Global North (such as Canada or the United States), contrasting the experiences of subaltern workers. The third phase includes semi-structured interviews with workers in the cannabis industry, unions, and experts, seeking to understand their perceptions of working conditions and challenges. A critical analysis based on institutional ethnography and discourse analysis will be used to investigate how legalization naturalizes inequalities.The project seeks to highlight the exclusion and marginalization of workers in the legal cannabis market, even in countries where legalization has occurred. Indigenous farmers and Colombian peasants, with extensive cultivation experience, remain marginalized while large multinational corporations benefit. Temporary migrant workers in California and Canada face low wages and precarious working conditions, despite the industry's profitability. These examples reveal how the global cannabis market, even when legal, perpetuates historical inequalities, particularly in the Global South. In the Brazilian context, the project explores how the emerging cannabis market may reproduce similar exclusions, marginalizing workers and small family farmers. Observations will include traditional cannabis producers, the retail dynamics of the drug trade, and legal labor in the emerging medicinal cannabis market. (AU)