Third World Quarterly

2020, VOL. 41, NO. 7, 1218–1239

https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2020.1761252

Automotive global value chains in Mexico:

a mirage of development?
Mateo Crossaa and Nina Ebnerb
Development Studies Program, Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ), Zacatecas, Mexico;
a

Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

b

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

International monetary organisations argue the ‘developing countries’ Received 19 December
should foster linkages to the world economy as a means to overcome 2018
backwardness. In this article we refute the narrative that Mexico has Accepted 14 April 2020
experienced industrial upgrading. Rather, industrial growth in Mexico KEYWORDS
over the last 40 years has been shaped by neoliberal economic policies uneven development
which have turned the Mexican economy into an export-led manufac- critical GPN studies
turing platform designed to supply the North American market, sus- Mexico
tained by a precarious labour market. As a result, Mexico occupies the automobile industry
most labour-intensive and low value-added segments of regional pro-
duction chains. To make this argument, we perform an in-depth analysis
of the Mexican automotive industry, demonstrating that instead of
being an engine for domestic industrial development, the auto industry
has become a dominant economic sector through productive
hyper-specialisation concentrated in the northern Mexican border
states, a reliance on transnational capital, particularly from the United
States, a disconnect with domestic markets, and the super-exploitation
of labour.

Introduction
The expansion of global production and distribution chains has triggered the formation,
and growth, of an influential economic argument that ‘developing countries’ should foster
linkages to the world economy as means to overcome backwardness. This perspective sug-
gests that national, and regional, endogenous growth can be achieved in these countries
via strategic coupling, or the connection to global production networks through the consol-
idation of technological abilities and competitive skills, which will ultimately help nations,
and regions, climb to higher value-added productive stages.1 Beginning with conceptuali-
sations such as global value chains (GVCs) or global supply chains (GSCs), this view has
become increasingly accepted by international organisations such as the World Bank, Inter-
American Development Bank (IDB), and Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), which use this conceptual framework to justify the promotion of
economic policies aimed to encourage export-led development in the ‘developing’ world.

CONTACT Mateo Crossa macrosiel@gmail.com Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ), Zacatecas, Zac., México,
98068, México
© 2020 Global South Ltd
 Third World Quarterly 1219

Here, the World Bank highlights the importance of linkages with production networks as an
engine for growth:
With GVC-driven development, countries can generate growth by moving to higher-val-
ue-added tasks and by embedding more technology and know-how in all their agriculture,
manufacturing, and services production. GVCs provide countries the opportunity to leap-frog
their development process.2

Gereffi defines industrial upgrading as ‘the process by which economic actors – nations, firms,
and workers – move from low-value to relatively high-value activities in global production net-
works’.3 This evolutionary process is said to foster ‘a better attitude towards innovation and to
create value added, whether entering new, high-value market niches or sectors, or acquiring
new product or service functions’.4 Industrial upgrading is achieved through a process of tech-
nological transfer and acquisition of know-how, in which firms located in more advanced links
of production networks instruct links relegated to lower-value positions on how to produce
goods with a higher technological content.5 Blyde, Martincus and Molina, from the Inter-American
Development Bank, describe the technological advancement which accompanies upgrading:
Participation in global production networks has also been related to other benefits, includ-
ing learning, transfer of technology, and indirect effects of the transfer of knowledge […] the
acquisition of diverse forms of knowledge, including technical and management, constitute
additional benefits of access to global production chains.6

Under this logic, developing economies may become involved, and compete, in increas-
ingly complex production stages by appropriating greater value-added activities, such as
research and development (R&D) or the production of highly automated components. In
order to do this, however, they must have local, national and regional institutional support – in
the form of educational, fiscal and tariff incentives – that helps consolidate their industrial-
entrepreneurial ascent.7 This perspective asserts that these factors are key to enabling nations
to increase productive investment flows, and ultimately achieve a position of greater com-
petitiveness in the global economy. The director of the OECD, Ángel Gurría, explains:
Everyone can benefit from global value chains, but we will all benefit more if governments take
steps to enhance the new business environment …. It is essential to embrace freer trade and
resist protectionism as countries seek out new investment, faster productivity enhancement
and competitiveness. Encouraging the development and participation in global value chains
is the road to more jobs and sustainable growth for our economies.8

In Mexico, this perspective has been espoused by academics and promoters of mainstream
economic policies, who have also eulogised the role of the automotive industry as a key sector
in the evolution of the overall competitiveness of the Mexican economy. They suggest that
growth of foreign direct investment in the auto industry has been integral in guiding the
Mexican economy onto the path of generational upgrading, has strengthened its productive
apparatus, and has ultimately generated enhanced conditions of global competitiveness.9
These academics and promoters argue that the automotive industry in Mexico has become
the spearhead for economic development, leveraging industrial growth and technological
innovation, advancing the entire national industrial landscape and enabling Mexico to occupy
higher value added segments of the value chain.10 A recent publication describing the Mexican
auto industry’s strategic process of ‘catching up’ illustrates this, asserting that ‘the dynamics
of global production networks in the automotive industry have allowed the development of
1220 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

abilities associated with technological advancement, the knowledge transfer process, and
entrepreneurial vision, among other things’.11 Analysing specific cases of upgrading experi-
ences in auto firms and supplier corporations operating in Mexico, these authors argue that
the automotive sector has encouraged industrial growth, which has in turn diminished
Mexico’s economic ‘backwardness’. ProMexico, the federal agency in Mexico responsible for
coordinating strategies aimed at strengthening export-led foreign and domestic investment,
corroborates the importance of the auto industry for Mexico’s industrial development:

Among all the factors that make Mexico an optimal environment for the development of global
businesses, there is one that in recent years has acquired special relevance. Mexico has been
able to develop an important supply chain in strategic economic sectors, such as the automo-
tive industry. Thus, the country is consolidating as an important production node in the supply
chain of goods and services required by global firms.12

In general, proponents of this perspective also compare Mexico’s experience with the path
to economic development of East Asian countries, in particular South Korea, and more recently
China. The ‘catching-up process’ in these countries is understood as being achieved through
a combination of market forces and strong state intervention, aimed at creating the conditions
to promote organisational learning, or the maintenance, transfer and generation of knowl-
edge within corporations. Economist Alice Amsden, in her well-known analysis of the cases
of South Korea and Taiwan, has called this ‘industrialising through learning’. She describes the
ways in which the consolidation of new industrialisation pathways is based on the economic,
and political, capacity to ‘borrow’ technologies from foreign investors. In these cases, the
aforementioned dynamics are understood as being key to the transition from a low val-
ue-added, labour-intensive, export-led industrial model to the consolidation of nationally
innovative economic systems, and ultimately to endogenous economic growth.13
In this article we will refute the narrative that Mexico has experienced industrial upgrading
by adopting the necessary technological knowledge to escalate value-added production. We
will instead demonstrate that the Mexican economy is far from meeting the conditions nec-
essary to fulfil a process of this magnitude. While it is true that export-led industrial production
is important to the Mexican economy, and that the automotive industry is a leading economic
sector, we do not believe that industrialisation in Mexico has followed a path of industrial
upgrading. Rather, industrial growth in Mexico over the last 40 years has been shaped by
neoliberal economic policies aimed at undoing the institutional supports built to maintain
an earlier import substitution model. These policies have subsequently turned the Mexican
economy into an export-led manufacturing platform designed to supply the North American
market, sustained by a precarious labour market. As a result, Mexico occupies the most
labour-intensive and low value-added segments of regional production chains.
Rather than continue to support the idea that the auto industry is an engine for domestic
industrial development, we instead demonstrate that it has become a dominant industrial
sector through productive hyper-specialisation, a reliance on transnational capital (especially
coming from the United States), a disconnect with domestic markets, and the super-
exploitation of labour, ultimately contributing to structural conditions of economic depen-
dency. Through a critical analysis of the automotive industry in Mexico, this article also joins
a growing body of scholarship which highlights the limitations of mainstream industrial
upgrading narratives, in particular the idea of industrial upgrading as a development alter-
native for underdeveloped economies.14 In the conclusion, we reflect on the conceptual
 Third World Quarterly 1221

implications of drawing connections between the theoretical framework of Marxist depen-

dency theory, in particular Marini’s theoretical development around the concept of labour
super-exploitation and emerging critical Global Production Network (GPN) approaches,
which argue for a conceptual focus on regions left out of, or marginalised in relation
to, GVCs.15
Following from the introduction, the first section discusses the ways in which the central
role of the automotive industry in the Mexican economy functions according to a scenario
that Cypher and Delgado Wise call technological exclusion.16 Despite the growth in the num-
ber of workers and exports in this sector, innovation through investment in research and
development is practically non-existent. The second section of the paper then demonstrates
that the automotive industry in Mexico has not diversified into different productive subsec-
tors. Rather, there has been a process of productive hyper-specialisation, in which the least
automated and most labour-intensive subsectors, in particular electric wire harness and seat
part production, predominate. The third section goes on to show how this export-led
hyper-specialisation has also become configured into what could be considered an enclave
pattern of territorial specialisation; the northern Mexican border states have the highest
concentration of workers. The subordination of the Mexican economy to the North American
industrial apparatus has made the northern border region the most important territory for
the automotive industry in the country. This section also outlines the explicit control of large
transnational firms over the automotive industry in Mexico. Finally, the fourth section pro-
vides an in-depth analysis of labour relations in the industry, which we describe as super-
exploitative. This last section demonstrates that, far from being an engine for industrialisation
that offers enhanced quality of life to workers, the development of the automotive industry
has instead pushed the working class to the limit, impoverishing and coercing it to unprec-
edented degrees. Recently, this has resulted in outrage, expressed in a wave of strikes and
work stoppages across Mexico.

Methods and data

This article is grounded in systematised official data related to international trade and labour
markets. Descriptive statistics generated from official Mexican sources such as the Manufacturing
Industry, Maquila and Export Services (IMMEX) and the National Statistical Directory of
Economic Units (DENUE), both provided by the National Institution of Statistics and Geography
(INEGI), are used to analyse Mexico’s position in both the North American and the global auto-
motive supply chain, as well as the geographical configuration of the manufacturing workforce
in the country. The article also incorporates insights from fieldwork carried out in the northern
Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez between 2017 and 2019, where we conducted numerous
interviews with workers, job-seekers, employers, local government representatives, business
investors, economic development agencies and activist organisations, in order to understand
the local implications of economic restructuring and development.

Automotive industrial restructuring and technological exclusion

In Mexico, the automotive industry got its start in 1925, when Ford built the first assembly
plant in Mexico City. Until the 1970s, the industry functioned according to a Fordist
1222 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

production model, and was dominated by the Detroit ‘Big Three’ – General Motors, Ford and
Chrysler – which, in the process of global expansion, located assembly plants near final
consumer markets in order to cut transportation costs. As explained in various studies of
this period, during the first half of the twentieth century, the auto industry did not play the
same role in Mexico’s industrialisation as it did in the United States. While key to the Second
Industrial Revolution in the US, in Mexico the auto industry was part of what Arteaga has
described as ‘foreign induced industrial growth’, and did not contribute to the endogenous
development of a national productive apparatus.17 In its early years Mexico’s automotive
industry was dependent on the import of auto parts from the US ‘Rust Belt’, in particular
southeast Michigan.18
In order to combat this dependency on imports, in 1962 President Lopez Mateos’ admin-
istration took steps towards import substitution. With the Decreto para la Integración de la
Industria Automotriz [Decree for the Integration of the Automotive Industry], any car assem-
bled in Mexico would need to have 60% of its content sourced from local suppliers. As
Bennett and Sharpe show, the main objective of this industrial policy was to ‘control the
industry’s level of imports for balance of payment purposes: limiting the market power of
the biggest firms and guaranteeing a minimum market share for the firms with Mexican
capital’.19 This nationalist industrial policy, an important political moment, proved to be
limited in scope. The US auto industry was at the dawn of a crisis, and the Mexican economy
would not emerge unscathed.
By the end of the 1970s, automotive sales in the United States began to decrease; the ‘Big
Three’ corporations were losing control over the US vehicle market as Japanese imports grew
exponentially, winning important portions of final vehicle sales. Under Reagan, the US federal
government responded to increasing competition by imposing a double-edged tariff policy
that both protected the US automotive market from the pressure of Asian imports and
spurred the recovery of US companies by facilitating the transfer of labour-intensive seg-
ments of auto production to Mexico. This was made possible by the Border Industrialization
Program (BIP), which opened northern Mexican border states to foreign investment and
export production.20 During this era Mexico also experienced its own economic transforma-
tion, encouraged by neoliberal policies aimed at developing an industrial landscape in
Mexico that was fully focussed on supplying the US market. This trend only deepened with
the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.
From NAFTA to the current day, the automotive industry in Mexico has become the most
important manufacturing activity in the country. It was, and still is, an export production
model, characterised by the labour-intensive assembly of auto parts which are then exported,
mainly to North America. In 2017, the auto industry represented 3% of the overall gross
domestic product (GDP) and 20% of the manufacturing GDP.21 The industrial labour force in
this sector has grown from 120,000 workers in 1980 to more than 900,000 in 2017, a 650%
increase.22 The share of automotive exports increased from 3% of total Mexican exports in
the 1980s to 25% in 2016.23 Of all auto related exports in 2016, 70% went to the US and 8%
to Canada, demonstrating that this sector, a backbone of the Mexican economy, is profoundly
dependent on the North American market.
In addition to its dependency on the North American market, Mexico continues to play a
subordinated role in the planning of production processes. In other words, the country has
become a platform for export-led production without any involvement in the design or inno-
vation of what is being manufactured. The increase in export assembly has not brought about
 Third World Quarterly 1223

the development of technological innovation, which, in industrial upgrading narratives, is

key to domestic national economic development.24 Instead, technological development is
stagnant in Mexico, which remains distanced from the technological capabilities of developed
economies which operate as leaders in the field of productive innovation and automation.
Figure 1 shows how, in general, Mexico has not promoted R&D. Of the 35 OECD countries,
Mexico has the lowest per capita R&D expenditure. While the OECD average displays a clear
growth trend, in Mexico, R&D expenditure over time does not demonstrate any sort of
robust increase, and has, in fact, remained relatively stagnant over the past 15 years.
If we turn to research and development in the auto industry more specifically, the follow-
ing table demonstrates the enormous difference in R&D investment between the United
States and Mexico (Table 1).
Mexico only invests 3% of what the United States invests in R&D. This contrast in spending
is even more striking when you consider that the two countries have a similar number of
automotive industry workers, 880,000 in Mexico and 940,000 in the US.25 Although Mexico
has become one of the largest suppliers of cars and auto parts for the US, the United States
has control over systems integrators, or the parts of the production process that have the
largest technological content. The systems integrator segments of automotive manufactur-
ing located, and concentrated, in the US have not yet appeared in the Mexican economy,
leading to its marginalisation in the creation, innovation and control of the North American
auto production chain. This, in turn, has strengthened the United States’ domination over
regional production.26

Figure 1.  Per capita research and development expenditure (US dollars).
Source: OECD, Science and Technology Indicators, https://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/estadisticas/

Table 1. Investment in research and development (R&D) in the automotive

industry, 2015 (millions of dollars, 2010 prices).
R&D in manufacturing industry R&D in automobile industry
Mexico 1666 458
USA 217262 17553
Source: OECD, “Business enterprise R&D expenditure by industry,” https://stats.oecd.org
1224 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

We argue that rather than bringing about endogenous development of a productive

apparatus that demands significant investment in science and technology, the auto indus-
try’s export-led industrial model has driven the Mexican economy to what Cypher and
Delgado Wise have called technological exclusion. This refers to the restricted participation
of Mexican economic actors in the planning of what is produced, of how it is produced, and
for whom it is produced:

The export-at-all-expense approach, as tied to largely unregulated production processes

driven by, and for, transnational corporations – overwhelmingly from the United States – has
resulted in the marginalization of Mexico’s dwindling industrial base. Unable, except in the
rarest instances, to participate in this production process, Mexico’s endogenous technological
capabilities have atrophied.27

Export-led productive hyper-specialisation in the

Mexican auto industry complex
US vehicle and auto part imports from Mexico have grown systematically and exponen-
tially in recent years. Although the US is currently the second most important car man-
ufacturer in the world after China, vehicle imports, especially those coming from Mexico,
have recently occupied an increasingly important share of the market. Imports from
Mexico, practically insignificant in the 1980s and 1990s, represented 26% of US vehicle
imports in 2018,28 the largest share of US car imports. Simultaneously, the auto industry
in Mexico has undergone an important shift, from assembling cars for the domestic
market to becoming an export-led platform dependent primarily on the United States.
In 2015, for example, Mexico exported 73% of all assembled cars to the United States
(Table 2).29
From the 1980s until the 2008 recession, most of the finished vehicle assembly operations
located in Mexico were owned by ‘Big Three’ corporations, and the majority of Mexican
vehicle exports were also controlled by these firms. However, between 2008 to 2018, this
shifted. The relatively small number of plants producing finished vehicles in Mexico nearly
doubled, from 10 plants in 2008 to 20 in 2020 (see Table 3). Out of the 11 new assembly
plants built, only two are controlled by US companies. The remaining six are owned by
Japanese, Korean and German firms that typically do not link their production chains to the
US economy, and only use NAFTA tariff preferences to locate their assembly production in
Mexico in order to conquer a greater share of the US vehicle market.30 This shift is indicative
of ongoing regional restructuring of automotive production networks. Mexico remains an

Table 2. US vehicle imports from Mexico.

1980 1990 2000 2010 2018
Total* 2.9 4 6.4 5.7 7.9
Total imports from 0 0.2 1 0.9 2.1
Mexico*
Imports from 0 5% 15% 16% 26%
Mexico/total
imports
*Millions of units.
Source: Data on vehicle trade was taken from US Comtrade, https://comtrade.un.org/data/, code
HS8703.
 Third World Quarterly 1225

export-led production platform for US companies and, increasingly, for the rest of the big
global automotive firms.
If we turn our attention to auto parts assembly in Mexico, the annexation of the Mexican
economy to the US automotive industrial complex becomes even more noticeable. As men-
tioned, the United States is the world’s second largest car manufacturer, and increasingly,
vehicles assembled in the US are supplied with imported parts coming from Mexico. As Table 4
shows, the US import of auto parts in 2016 was nine times greater than in 1980, growing
from 7 billion dollars to 62 billion. This exponential increase was linked primarily to increasing
imports from Mexico, which by 2016 accounted for almost a third of the total US auto part
imports.
The growth in auto part imports from Mexico is not, in itself, a good or bad sign for the
Mexican economy. Any supplier industry is composed of a diverse, and differentiated, group
of subsectors that vary qualitatively in terms of value-added generation. A diversified indus-
trial scenario in the auto parts industry could be a sign of industrial strength, since there are
subsectors that have high levels of technological content, and therefore represent val-
ue-added segments of the production chain. However, in the North American industrial
configuration, these production stages are not located in Mexico. As Table 5 shows, 30% of

Table 3.  Mexico: auto production by company.

Production capacity
Company Location Inauguration year (thousands)
Ford Hermosillo, Sonora 1983 378
Cuautitlán, Edo de Mexico 1964 328
General Motors Ramos Arizpe 1979 173
San Luis Potosí 2008 123
Guanajuato 1992 320
Chrysler Saltillo, Coahuila 2013 146
Toluca, Edo de Mexico 1968 146
Nissan Aguascalientes 1982 380
Aguascalientes 2013 175
Cuernavaca, Morelos 1966 300
Honda El Salto, Jalisco 1995 60
Celaya, Guanajuato 2014 200
Mazda Salamanca, Guanajuato 2013 230
Toyota Tijuana, Baja California 2004 64
Guanajuato 2020 266
VW Puebla, Puebla 1966 730
Mercedes Benz Aguascalientes 2019 300
Audi San José Chiapa, Puebla 2016 150
BMW San Luis Potosí 2019 175
KIA Monterrey, Nuevo León 2016 300
Source: https://elpais.com/especiales/2017/plantas-armadoras-de-autos-en-Mexico/. Grey shading indi-
cates plants built during the post-2008 period.

Table 4. US auto part imports from Mexico.

1980 1990 2000 2010 2018
Total auto part imports* 7 22 34 42 62
Total imports from 0 3 9 14 24
Mexico*
Imports from Mexico/ 0 14% 26% 33% 39%
total imports
*Billions of dollars (constant value, 2010).
Source: Data was taken from US Comtrade, https://comtrade.un.org/data/, codes SITC 784 and
77313 for 1980 and 1990; codes HS8708 and HS854430 for 2000, 2010 and 2018.
1226 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

Table 5.  Main components imported to the USA from Mexico.

1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2018
Total* 9 13 16 17 30 50
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Wire harness 35 31 25 21 19 17
Parts of seats 11 15 19 16 16 13
Engines 19 11 11 7 7 8
Gear boxes 0 1 1 6 6 6
Airbags 0 0 0 7 6 6
Steering wheels 2 2 3 4 5 5
Axles 0 1 0 3 5 4
Broadcast radio 13 13 8 3 3 4
Brakes 0 0 0 5 3 3
Electric lighting 1 1 2 2 2 3
Speedometers 5 4 4 2 3 3
Suspensions 0 0 1 2 2 3
Other 14 20 26 21 25 23
*Billions of dollars at current value.
Source: This table was elaborated with eight-digit HTM codes, which is a lot more specific than North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes. NAICS divides the whole auto industry into 10 subsectors, while
HTM codification refers to auto components.

US auto part imports from Mexico in 2016 were concentrated in wire harnesses and seat
parts. These two components, particularly wire harness production, are the least automated
and most labour-intensive stages of the production chain, and also produce the least value
added.31 Mexico is by far the largest wire harness and seat part supplier to the US, accounting
for almost 80% and 67%, respectively, of the US imports of these parts (Table 5).32
Table 6 demonstrates that Mexico, beyond exporting wire harnesses to the US, is also the
largest wire harness exporter in the world, producing 22.3% of worldwide harness exports.
Without wire harness production, Mexico would be demoted as one of the top automotive
exporters in the world, and would lose practically half of all the jobs in its automotive
industry.
Just as Mexico is the largest exporter of wire harnesses worldwide, it is also the largest
exporter of seat parts. As the following table shows, in 2018, Mexico exported almost 6 billion
dollars’ worth of seat parts, equivalent to 18.3% of global seat part trade (Table 7).
Seat part assembly, or the production of seat interiors, has become an increasingly com-
plex part of the auto industry production chain due to the incorporation of technology in
some of its production segments.33 Producing a car seat today involves both highly auto-
mated production processes dependent on innovations in the metal-working industries,
and narrowly automated processes located in the garment sector. The latter activity occupies
a larger share of the Mexican economy.
Because wire harness and seat part assembly are two of the more labour-intensive, and
less automated, stages in the production of automobiles, they need a large labour force.
As Figure 2 demonstrates, in 2017 about 700,000 people worked in auto parts assembly in
Mexico, the majority of workers employed in this industry. Nearly 50% of auto part assembly
workers manufacture wire harnesses (categorised as electric equipment) and seat parts –
320,000 and 111,000, respectively.
In contrast, 55% of the US auto industry workforce was located in final assembly, engine
production, transmissions and stamping, four of the most advanced production stages in
terms of value added. In Mexico, these subsectors accounted for only 20% of the automotive
workforce. Despite having similar numbers of total workers in the automotive industry, the
 Third World Quarterly 1227

Table 6.  The 10 largest exporters of harnesses worldwide, 2018.

Harness exports* Percentage of the total
Total 35.82 100.0
Mexico 7.99 22.3
Romania 2.94 8.2
China 2.89 8.1
USA 2.17 6.0
Morocco 1.92 5.4
Philippines 1.69 4.7
Germany 1.45 4.1
Ukraine 1.37 3.8
Czechia 1.21 3.4
Serbia 1.10 3.1
*Billions of dollars.
Source: UN Comtrade, HS02 code 854430, https://comtrade.un.org

Table 7.  Top 10 exporters of seat parts worldwide, 2018.

Seat part exports * Percentage of the total
Total 30.5 100.0
Mexico 5.6 18.3
China 3.7 12.0
USA 2.6 8.6
Czechia 2.6 8.5
Poland 2.3 7.6
Germany 2.2 7.2
Romania 1.1 3.7
Canada 1.0 3.3
Rep. of Korea 0.9 2.9
*Billions of dollars.
Source: UN Comtrade, HS02 code 940190, https://comtrade.un.org

US registered 140,000 more workers in the final assembly stage. Comparatively, Mexico
employed 136,000 more workers in auto part assembly.
In Figure 3 we can see that electric-electronic (wire harnesses) and seat parts are the
subsectors with the largest number of workers in Mexico, yet in the case of fixed assets and
value added, they represent the smallest amounts per worker. This is due to the fact that
rates of fixed assets and value added are linked to levels of automation and productivity.
The highest rates are found in contexts where the workforce is dedicated to controlling and
evaluating machine performance.
The distribution of automation and productivity within the automotive industry is noto-
riously uneven amongst the subsectors that make up the production chain.34 In the case of
North America, the manufacturing segments with large amounts of technology are concen-
trated in the US, where production costs are primarily linked to capital investment. Conversely,
the Mexican auto industry represents the least automated, and the most labour-intensive,
link of the chain. In Mexico, where machinery is far from replacing the human workforce,
the labour process continues to depend largely on manual assembly and large numbers of
workers. As a result, electric-electronic (wire harness) and seat part production subsectors
have the lowest fixed assets and value-added rates.35 A manager of a prominent manufac-
turing plant in Ciudad Juárez put it this way:

technological innovation and automation is expensive. The cost of labour does not justify auto-
mation. We did a cost benefit analysis, and what we would spend investing in automation
would be the same amount as what we would spend on labour costs for five years. It just wasn’t
worth it for us.36
1228 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

Figure 2. USA and Mexico: Number of employees per subsector in the automobile industry (2017; thou-
sands).
Source: BLS, Current Employment Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/ces/; INEGI, Banco de Información Económica,
http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/

Figure 3.  Mexico: Value added, fixed assets and number of workers by automotive subsectors (2017).
Source: Inegi, Banco de Información Estadística, https://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/
An analysis of the Mexican auto industry’s main exports, wire harnesses and seat parts,
demonstrates both the productive hyper-specialisation of the Mexican auto industry and
the uneven division of labour in the regional automotive production chain. As demonstrated,
these two sectors dominate the industry. If harnesses and seat part production were no
longer located in Mexico, the entire image of a thriving automotive industry in Mexico would
 Third World Quarterly 1229

dissolve. It would also paralyse the US auto industry complex, which has grown to rely heavily
on imports and cheap labour from Mexico.
When Mexican politicians and chambers of commerce proudly boast about Mexico being
an automotive industry powerhouse, they are concealing the amazing degree of productive
fragmentation and specialisation that predominates in this export-led activity. In addition,
they do not discuss how the hyper-specialized links of the production chain located in Mexico
require an impoverished and precarious workforce. Wire harness and seat part production
are not only the least automated, and the most labour-intensive, segments of the regional
automotive supply chain, but also the most poorly paid.37 As such, they could be considered
the weakest links in the North American auto manufacturing chain.
In effect, the analysis presented here directly contradicts the recent World Bank
Development Report 2020, which calls for ‘developing nations’ to enhance processes of pro-
ductive hyper-specialisation in order to generate greater competitive advantage:

Because of hyperspecialization, exporting no longer requires mastering the entire production

process of a good; countries can specialize in only a few tasks in the production process. For
these two important reasons, companies in developing countries that participate in GVCs tend
to be more productive, and all forms of GVC participation are associated with higher income
growth than standard trade.38

The uneven territorial division of labour, and evidence of hyper-specialisation linked to

labour precarity, is evidence that the auto industry in Mexico does not represent a lever of
economic growth and industrial upgrading. In Mexico, where wire harness and seat part
production come together to form the backbone of the automotive industry, in terms of
both exports and labour market share, the precariousness of wages and labouring popula-
tions have become the essential comparative advantages of the country’s economy.

Formation of a territorial enclave

Productive hyper-specialisation has turned Mexico into a territorial enclave for exports.
Following the notion of an ‘enclave economy’ that Gallagher and Zarsky use to describe the
so-called industrial cluster of the city of Guadalajara, economic enclaves are characterised
by both transnational economic dependencies and a separation from the domestic econ-
omy.39 Following Porter’s neoclassical analytic framework, many spatial analyses of the auto-
motive industry in Mexico characterise the geographic concentration of industrial activity
as industrial clusters.40 This approach argues that the growth of the automotive industry has
led to the consolidation of industrial regions, which articulate in an environment of com-
petitive advantages.41
Our case study of the automotive industry in Mexico highlights the consolidation of an
export enclave spatiality, rather than the formation of industrial clusters. As we demonstrate,
the northern border has become the spatial backbone of the Mexican auto industry’s geo-
graphical configuration.42 The export-led industrial model that has formed in these states
primarily targets North American markets. When we consider these dynamics – the frag-
mented geography of the auto industry within the national territory, and the cultivation of
economic relationships with the United States at the expense of the domestic economy – it
is impossible to conceive of the Mexican automotive industry as an articulation of compet-
itive advantages expressed in the formation of clusters.
1230 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

As Figure 4 shows, the automotive industry in Mexico is concentrated in the northern

border states, which are in closest geographical proximity to what is known as Auto Alley, in
the eastern United States.43 The formation of this large industrial corridor influenced industrial
growth in the northeastern Mexican border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and
Tamaulipas.44 In 2017, these four states contained 53% of the total workers in the Mexican
auto industry. Chihuahua had the largest number of workers (160,000), most of them located
in the municipal area of Ciudad Juárez. The state of Coahuila registered a total of 155,000
workers, while Nuevo León and Tamaulipas had fewer than 70,000 workers each. These four
states have become the most important suppliers of auto parts for the North American auto-
motive industry, and are key to the maintenance of Auto Alley in the United States.
If the Mexican automotive industry is spatially concentrated in the northeastern states, the
production of harnesses and seat parts only deepens this territorial specialisation. Not only does
the wiring industry employ 44% of the total number of workers in the auto industry in Mexico,
but as demonstrated in Figure 5, the production of harnesses is concentrated at Mexican’s

Figure 4.  Mexico: percentage of automotive workers by state (2017).

Source: INEGI, Encuesta Mensual de la Industria Manufacturera, http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/

Figure 5. Average hourly labour costs of workers in auto manufacturing countries (US dollars; 2015).
Source: Top Foreign Stock, Average Hourly Rate for Auto Workers in Select Countries, https://topforeign-
stocks.com/2016/10/26/average-houry-rate-for-auto-workers-in-select-countries/
 Third World Quarterly 1231

northeastern border. Chihuahua, and in particular Ciudad Juárez, dominate in harness produc-
tion, employing 30% of the total harness industry workers in Mexico. The states of Chihuahua,
Coahuila, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Sonora together employ 66% of the workers in this
subsector. As such, the northeastern border states are key to ensuring the continued production
of wire harnesses, to maintain Mexico’s role as the largest harness exporter in the world.
The wire harness industry is overseen and controlled by large transnational corporations,
led by 11 corporations: Delphi, Yazaki, Sumitomo, Fujikura, Condumex, Furuwaka Electric,
Lear, Bosch, Denso, Leoni and Continental. Together, they control 180 of the 250 establish-
ments that produce car harnesses. The two corporations with the largest number of estab-
lishments are the Japanese company Yazaki, and the US company Delphi. Yazaki has around
50 establishments in Mexico, while Delphi has approximately 45,45 and together they control
over a third of the harness industry production plants in the country.46 The next two largest
harness companies are the Japanese company Sumitomo Electric and the Mexican company
Condumex (owned by Mexican multimillionaire oligarch Carlos Slim), which have roughly
20 plants each.47 These four companies run approximately half of all the harness industry
establishments in the country.
The seat part industry is similar to the harness industry, in that it is also territorially con-
centrated on the northern border; 72% of the workers in this subsector are located in
Coahuila, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas. It too is a link in the production chain that operates
as part of a spatial logic which turns the northeastern border region into a strategic produc-
tive base for North American companies. Two companies from the US, Adient-Johnson
Controls and the Lear Corporation, control 47% of the seat part production plants in Mexico.48
Of the 87 economic units registered by INEGI in the production of seat parts and interiors,
Adient-Johnson Controls has 16 establishments and Lear Corporation has 25.49 Other com-
panies with an important presence in this sector are the French company Faurecia, the
American company Irvin Auto Group, the Spanish company Grupo Antolin, and the Japanese
company Toyota Buchoku.
Considering the dynamics described in this section – the geographical concentration of
production in the northern border states, and the strong connection with US and transna-
tional capital, both in terms of control over production and as markets for products assem-
bled – we argue that the auto industry in Mexico does not take the form of industrial clusters.
Rather, we demonstrate that the economy is dominated by an industrial export-oriented
enclave at Mexico’s northern border, controlled by large transnational corporations that
supply the US market.

Super-exploitation in the automotive industry

Mexico has been a part of the North American automotive region for the past 40 years, yet
there is no sign that development in this sector has bolstered the national economy. Rather
than producing a dynamic that has led to greater integration with production networks, or
to endogenous growth, the automotive industry in Mexico has been an engine for the repro-
duction of Mexico’s economic dependency, which, in turn, has contributed to the develop-
ment of export-led enclaves, productive hyper-specialisation, a lack of innovation and
participation in technical activities, and the increasing control of foreign capital.
Mexico’s auto industry continues to attract investment due to what Marini has called the
super-exploitation of labour.50 This includes the ability to keep wages low through the
1232 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

reduction of tariffs/taxes, currency inequalities, and the implementation of punitive cross-bor-

der immigration, trade, labour and law enforcement policies, all factors which contribute to
the devaluation of Mexican labour. As Figure 5 shows, among the national economies with
strong automotive industries, Mexico displays the lowest wages in the world, one of the
reasons why labour-intensive production continues to be located there.
In the post-2008 recession recovery period, during which the number of workers in the
auto industry doubled, the average wage for workers fell by 10%.51 A common argument
made by transnational corporations is that if workers in the Mexican auto industry were to
be paid more, car prices would increase, and sales would collapse. Additionally, if wages
were increased, production might relocate elsewhere, and the integrity of the regional pro-
duction chain (and Mexico’s inclusion in the chain) would be disrupted. According to Misty
Mathews, head of Yasaki’s North American public relations, when asked about the renego-
tiation of NAFTA, the ‘White House trade policy initiatives can do and say what they feel best,
but if we don’t find a way of making robots attach insulating tape to a cable, all our jobs will
stay in Mexico’.52 As an employee of Yasaki, one of the world’s largest harness-producing
companies, and one of the largest in Mexico, Mathews’ statement reveals that low wages
and a large surplus of workers continue to make Mexico an attractive site of auto part pro-
duction for large transnational corporations.
Because wages remain so low, they are far from giving workers the purchasing power
required to cover basic needs, and therefore to decently reproduce the workforce. According
to estimations by the Centro de Análisis Mutidisciplinario (Center for Multidisciplinary Analysis),
in 2017 the cost of basic food expenses for the average family in Mexico was 417 USD (7500
Mexican pesos) per month. However, according to the (optimistic) figures provided by official
data, the monthly annual income of workers in the automotive industry was only 314 USD
per month (5820 pesos).53 In other words, the average worker’s wage covers only 77% of a
family’s monthly nutritional needs. This deficit does not even consider other essential costs
like housing, transportation or medical needs. Claudia, a mother of three in Ciudad Juárez,
says, ‘in order to make ends meet, I work a double-shift five days a week’.54 Other workers
sell second-hand clothes, and the few that can cross the border into the United States find
jobs in the informal economy, or sell their blood plasma to collection facilities.55
It is important to point out that super-exploitation is more than just low wages. When
Marini argues that Latin American capitalism has developed through violating the value of
the labour force, this also means that the lives of workers are in jeopardy.56 In Mexico, export
production has depended on the availability of a seemingly endless surplus of entry-level
assembly line workers. Melissa Wright’s work has been influential in showing how industrial
production generates value from the (often gendered) devaluation of the labour force it
relies on.57 The value of a worker’s labour decreases as her body is exhausted by its work,
even as she continues to provide value to the firm. The figure of the Mexican obrera, always
in decline, guarantees that ‘her labour power will always be worth less than the costs of her
social reproduction’.58 As a result, workers’ wages can be lowered to a point that violates the
value of their labour force.
In order to maintain this profound violence towards workers, the Mexican state has sup-
ported an aggressive policy that seeks to prevent the independent organisation of the work-
force at all costs.59 The state has fostered corporate-controlled unions through illegitimate
collective bargaining agreements (commonly known as ‘protection contracts’) that currently
serve as a coercive mechanism to limit, hinder, violate and prevent the independent, and
 Third World Quarterly 1233

democratic, organisation of workers in export-led industrial sectors, particularly in the auto-

motive industry. This corporate unionism responds to management needs, preventing work-
ers from organising against precarious working conditions and low wages.60 Covarrubias
and Bouzas mention that the aim of corporate unions and protection contracts has been to
eliminate authentic collective bargaining. As they describe,
The employer, even before establishing a plant, contacts and makes an agreement with a
‘leader’ of an officially registered union; together, they determine and sign a ‘collective bar-
gaining agreement’, then register it with the government, so that, by the time the first worker
is hired, he or she already has a union and a collective bargaining contract. It is a circular pro-
cess in which illegitimate union leaders, companies and government safeguard themselves,
yet leave the workers out.61

As a result, although it might seem surprising at a first glance that there is a high degree
of unionisation in the automotive industry in Mexico, Covarrubias and Bouzas show that
these unions are what Arnulfo Arteaga has called ‘de facto corporation partners’; they coddle
companies while turning their backs on workers.62 Through this process, the government
obtains the support of corporate and ‘union’ partners for economic and political initiatives,
employers gain an unprecedented ability to control the hiring process and worsen working
conditions, and union leaders in return access personal, economic and political benefits
which include recognition as someone with whom agreements can be reached.63 In this
context, unions can be understood as retaining walls used to curtail collective action by
workers against super-exploitative working conditions.
Considering the aggressiveness of labour policies deployed by the Mexican state, and
the actions of private capital, the uprising of workers employed in different auto parts and
assembly plants in the past 10 years has been nothing short of astonishing. A large part of
this rebellion has taken place in the form of strikes, or labour stoppages, that then become
vehicles for workers to denounce harassment from managers, sexual harassment, low wages,
unjustified dismissals and the complicity of corporate unions. A significant number of these
actions demand the recognition of independent and democratic unions.
It is worth highlighting some examples of these uprisings. Honda workers in the state of
Guadalajara went on strike in 2013, and then sought to become an independent union,
although the state and the company tried in every way possible to avoid meeting the workers’
demands. Workers in the Mazda plant went on strike in the state of Guanajuato in March of
2015 to denounce sexual harassment and unjustified dismissals. Also noteworthy are the
strikes in the Delphi plants throughout the country between 2015 and 2017. Despite the
government’s implementation of a variety of repressive policies to limit collective bargaining,
workers all over Mexico have been rallying against state oppression. Their efforts are not
without results; in January 2019 approximately 30,000 workers went on strike in Matamoros,
demanding a 20% raise and a 32,000 peso ($1600 USD) bonus, and in February, managers
at 45 factories agreed to their demands.64

Conclusion
This article refutes the narrative, coming from Mexican chambers of commerce, politicians
and academics, that Mexico is an automotive powerhouse. Instead, we demonstrate that
rather than spearheading a process of endogenous economic development, the growth of
the export-led automotive industry in Mexico has instead contributed to a fragmented,
1234 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

precarious and dependent national industrial configuration. Firstly, we show the auto indus-
try in Mexico has operated in an environment of technological exclusion, where strategic
decisions about technological innovations are being imported from elsewhere. Secondly,
the development of the auto industry has been characterised by productive hyper-special-
isation, dominated by the most labour-intensive subsectors of the global auto production
chain. Thirdly, this export-led productive hyper-specialisation can be linked to the growth
of an enclave industrial structure; northern Mexican border states are the backbone of the
auto industry. Finally, we argue that the automotive industry workforce exists under condi-
tions of super-exploitation, characterised by low wages and substandard working conditions.
The automotive industry in Mexico, far from being an engine of development for the country,
has reinforced Mexico’s process of fragmented growth, mass poverty and dependency.
The argument we make has both conceptual and political implications. Theoretically, it
reinvigorates dependency theory (DT) arguments which refute modernist and ‘residualist’,
stage-like models of capitalist economic development.65 It also contributes to a growing
body of critical GPN scholarship, which, like DT, argues for the analytical centring of regions
(and nations) that remain trapped in low-value positions in the global economy, as part of
uneven socio-spatial capitalist relations.66 This perspective provides an important contribution
to DT because it emphasises that capitalism is not simply an advancing frontier which evolves
through an already defined hierarchical core–periphery structure. Rather, this approach advo-
cates for the need to continually investigate how uneven economic integration unfolds; in
other words, the ‘question of hierarchy – of the way that divisions of labour and investment
depend on and reproduce relations of subordination and domination within and between
places at a variety of scales’ should be posed rather than assumed.67 Through our analysis of
the evolution and restructuring of Mexico’s auto industry, Mexico’s dependency on the US
emerges as an object of analysis rather than an already existing, or pre-given, spatial desig-
nation, gaining coherence through the ways in which processes of capital accumulation
articulate with place-specific histories, wider sets of social relations, and forms of struggle.
Finally, we posit that in order for Mexico to launch a comprehensive process of industri-
alisation that might involve the creation of industrial clusters based on competitive advan-
tages, or to begin a process of endogenous development, it must break away from its
dependence on the United States, and its subordination in the global economy. This will
only be possible if Mexico ends export-led productive specialisation, promotes growth in
R&D activities, and significantly increases real wages in the country. This would mean, in
other words, radically changing the economic development model that Mexico has been
cultivating for the past 40 years.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Mateo Crossa holds a double degree PhD in Development Studies at the Autonomous University of
Zacatecas (UAZ) and Latin American Studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM). His research interest is focussed mainly in the study of labour and the maquiladora industry
in Central America and Mexico through the lens of critical Latin American political economy. His pub-
lications include the book Honduras: maquilando subdesarrollo en la mundialización [Honduras:
 Third World Quarterly 1235

Manufacturing Underdevelopment in Globalization]. He has also participated in multiple film projects

such as the documentary film Made in Honduras, which portrays the life and labour rights organisation
of maquiladora workers in Honduras.
Nina Ebner is a Doctoral Candidate in the Geography Department at the University of British Columbia.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of feminist political economy, critical development and
border studies. Her doctoral research focuses on economic development and labour market partici-
pation on the US–Mexico border, currently based in El Paso/Ciudad Juárez. She believes strongly in
the importance of collaborative research, and is involved with grassroots efforts to end migrant
detention, and to create more sustainable economic futures for border residents.

Notes
1. See Henderson et  al., “Global Production Networks”; Coe et  al., “Globalizing Regional
Development”; Yeung, “Regional Development and the Competitive Dynamics.”
2. World Bank, “Global Value Chains,“ World Bank website, accessed September 9, 2018, http://
www.worldbank.org/en/topic/trade/brief/global-value-chains
3. Gereffi, “Global Economy: Organization, Governance, and Development,“ 171.
4. López Salazar and Carrillo, “Escalamiento y trabajo,” 83.
5. Lall, “Technological Structure and Performance.”
6. Blyde, Martincus, and Molina, Fábricas sincronizadas, 10.
7. Gereffi, Humphrey, and Sturgeon, “Governance of Global Value Chains.“
8. Words of OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría at the OECD Forum in Paris, 2013. Published on
the OECD website, accessed September 9, 2018, http://www.oecd.org/economy/newap-
proachtoglobalisationandglobalvaluechainsneededtoboostgrowthandjobs.htm
9. Villalpando, “La evolución de la industria maquiladora”; Carrillo and Gomis, "Generaciones de ma-
quiladoras”; López Salazar, Juárez, and Carrillo, “Complejidad e innovación en proveedores,” 171.
10. Lourdes, Carrillo, and González, El auge de la industria automotriz.
11. López Salazar, Juárez, and Carrillo, “Complejidad e innovación en proveedores,” 180.
12. ProMexico, “Cadenas globales de valor,” 8.
13. Amsden, “Diffusion of Development,” 283.
14. Although this article doesn’t aim to expound on the wide range of critical perspectives that
counter notions of GVCs and industrial upgrading, there are two main perspectives. One is a
labour-centred perspective that emphasizes the incorporation of a super-exploited labour
force in the developing world, as a means to achieve inclusion in global production networks.
See Selwyn, “Poverty Chains and Global Capitalism”; Hough, “Race to the Bottom”; Smith,
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century; Cope, Labor in Transitional Societies. The other main per-
spective highlights the role of GVCs in the perpetuation of uneven development. See
Fernández, La trilogía del erizo-zorro; Werner, “Global Production Networks and Uneven
Development”; Werner, Bair, and Fernández, “Linking up to Development.” Both perspectives
demystify the narrative centred around the idea that global production and distribution net-
works function as development levers.
15. Marini, “Dialéctica de la dependencia.”
16. Cypher and Delgado Wise, Mexico a la deriva, 141.
17. Arteaga, Integración productiva, 70.
18. This territorial division of labour, wherein most of the auto parts were made in the Rust Belt
region and then distributed to assembly lines scattered around the US and the larger global
economy, was named by geographers Rubernstein and Klier the ‘Branch Assembly Model’. Klier
and Rubenstein, Who Really Made Your Car?, 40.
19. Bennett and Sharpe, Transnational Corporations versus the State, 117.
20. Launched in 1965, the Border Industrialization Program allowed US companies to temporarily
send parts of their production across the Mexican border without having to pay taxes or
comply with Mexican rules of origin.
21. ProMexico, “Estudios de capacidades,” 5.
1236 M. CROSSA AND N. EBNER

22. The 1980 data were taken from Arteaga, Integración productiva, 105. Data from 1990 and 2000
were taken from the Centro de Estudios de las Finanzas Públicas (CEFP). (2002). Análisis
Económico y Fiscal del Sector Automotor de Mexico, 1990–2001. DF: Cámara de Diputados.
Data from 2010 and 2018 were taken from INEGI’s Economic Information Bank, at http://www.
inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/
23. The auto-related export industry data from 1983 to 1991 was taken from Barajas, Sosa, 2015, La
industria automotriz de Mexico: de la sustitución de importaciones a la promoción de export-
aciones. Revista Análisis Económico, 20(44), 208. The rest was taken from INEGI’s Economic
Information Bank at http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/
24. Medina Ramirez, “La Dependencia Tecnológica En Mexico.“
25. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Current Employment Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/ces/; INEGI,
Banco de Información Económica, http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/
26. Nolan, Zhang, and Liu, “Global Business Revolution,” 29.
27. Cypher and Delgado Wise, Mexico a la deriva,141.
28. Data taken from OICA, Production and Sales Statistics, http://www.oica.net/
29. ProMexico, “La industria automotriz mexicana,” 54.
30. NAFTA Rules of Origin require that 60% of the vehicle content must originate in any of the
three North American countries. Japanese, Korean and German firms have taken advantage of
this trade requirement and established their new assembly plants in Mexico, without having to
link their production chain to the US. The USMCA elevates North American auto content to
75% and requires that 40% of a vehicle’s value must be produced in a North American country
where wages are higher than $16 per hour (ie the US and Canada). These new conditions will
force firms to link their production to the US economy.
31. Miker, Aprendizaje Laboral, 29.
32. Data taken from UN Comtrade, HS02 codes 854430 and 940190, https://comtrade.un.org
33. Lara, García Garnica, and René, “La Dinámica Del Cambio Tecnológico.“
34. AAPC, “State of the US Auto Industry,“ 12.
35. In these less automated links of the global production chain, work is clearly subsumed to the
logic of capital; our interest is in emphasising that the stages of the production process found
in Mexico are the most manual in the entire production process.
36. Interview with anonymous plant manager, Ciudad Juárez, summer 2018.
37. Sturgeon, et al., Philippines in the Automotive Global Value Chain, 7.
38. World Bank, Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains, World Development
Report 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2020
39. Gallagher and Zarsky, Enclave Economy.
40. The notions of competitive advantages and industrial clusters, tailored by Michael Porter and
grounded in neoclassical thought, refer to an articulated and interrelated environment of in-
dustrial factors that produce an ecosystem of competitiveness that promotes local develop-
ment and the formation of industrial regions bound to the process of globalization. Porter,
Competitive Advantage.
41. Carrillo, Maquiladoras automotrices; Davila Flores, “Clusters industriales del noreste de Mexico.”
42. Daville Landero, “Relocalización de la industria automotriz”; Carbajal, Carrillo, and Leobardo de
Jesús, "Dinámica productiva del sector automotriz.”
43. Klier and Rubenstein, Who Really Made Your Car?
44. The industrialization of the northern border was also encouraged by the Decree for the
Development and Operation of the Maquiladora Industry (1989), which further opened border
states to foreign investment and increased the export of goods to northern markets. The ma-
quiladora programme has since been expanded to the entire nation.
45. Information taken from the Directorio Estadístico Nacional de Unidades Económicas, http://
www.beta.inegi.org.mx/app/mapa/denue/
46. Yazaki operates in Mexico under the following names: Arnecom, AAMSA, Autoconectores de
Chihuahua, BAPSA, PEDSA, ACOSA and Sistemas Eléctricos y Conductores. Delphi/Aptiv oper-
ates in Mexico under the following names: Aees Manufacturera, Alambrados y Circuitos
Eléctricos, Aptiv, and Delphi Rio Bravo Electricos.
 Third World Quarterly 1237

47. Sumitomo operates in Mexico under the following names: Sistemas de Arneses K&S Mexicana
and ATR. Condumex operates in Mexico under the following names: Contec and Arneses
Eléctricos Automotrices.
48. Information taken from the Directorio Estadístico Nacional de Unidades Económicas, http://
www.beta.inegi.org.mx/app/mapa/denue/
49. Adient is a spinoff of Johnson Controls, and operates in Mexico under the following names:
Brena Mex, TechnoTrim, Ediasa and ADIENT. Lear Corporation operates in Mexico under the
names Consorcio Industrial Mexicano de Autopartes and Lear.
50. Marini, “Dialéctica de la dependencia.”
51. Covarrubias and Bouzas Ortiz, Empleo y políticas sindicales.
52. Interview with Misty Mathews in the Management Briefing Seminar in Travers City, August 2017.
53. CAM figure taken from CAM, “Investigation Report 127”; Figures of wages in the automotive
industry taken from the INEGI Monthly Survey of the Manufacturing Industry. Found in the
Economic Information Bank, http://www.inegi.org.mx/sistemas/bie/
54. Interview with Claudia, assembly line worker, Ciudad Juárez, summer 2018.
55. Ebner and Johnson, “Blood and Borders.” Based on over a year of fieldwork, and on conversa-
tions with workers, Ciudad Juárez, 2017–2019.
56. For more on the notion of superexploitation in Marxist Dependency Theory, see Osorio,
“Fundamentos de la superexplotacion.”
57. Wright, Disposable Women and Other Myths.
58. Ibid., 101.
59. On 1 May 2019, AMLO’s government passed a labour law reform to organize independent
unions, although it is unclear how this new reform will be implemented or enforced. See http://
dof.gob.mx/nota_detalle.php?codigo=5559131&fecha=01/05/2019
60. Arteaga, Integración productiva, 103.
61. Covarrubias and Bouzas Ortiz, Empleo y políticas sindicales, 10–1.
62. Words of sociologist Arnulfo Arteaga taken from https://www.reporteindigo.com/reporte/in-
dustria-automotriz-Mexico-contratos-laborales/, accessed August 18, 2018.
63. Ibid.
64. Tyx, “Labor Spring for Mexico’s Maquilas?”
65. Marini, “Dialéctica de la dependencia.” Also see Selwyn’s critique of ‘residualist’ assumptions that
‘inclusion into capitalism, or globalization or the world market brings economic growth and
development’. Sewlyn is emphatic in stating that the inclusion narrative only hides the deepen-
ing of exploitation and poverty in developing economies. Selwyn, Global Development Crisis, 2.
66. eg Werner, “Global Production Networks and Uneven Development.” In this formulation, the
emphasis is on the ‘restrictive and longstanding forms of social unevenness’ (461) which are
constitutive of global production networks.
67. Werner, “Extending Labor and Uneven Development,” 374.

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