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Recent scholarship within queer international political economy (IPE) has highlighted the intimate links between sexuality and capitalism, as well as the insights offered by queer approaches to the study of the global economy. This article critically advances this literature by examining the political economic foundations and facets of trans oppression. Against the backdrop of an (anti-) 'trans culture war' in the United Kingdom, gender-critical and other transexclusionary feminist discourse has sought to cleave trans people from class struggle and to portray trans activism as separate from, and in conflict with, the goals of the feminist movement. This discourse, I contend, is indicative of a broader lack of understanding about the ways in which trans oppression links to other forms of gender oppression under capitalism. The article argues that feminist IPE, and specifically social reproduction approaches, offer a powerful toolbox with which to illuminate the material bases of gendered, racialised and sexualised inequalities within the global economy, including those experienced by trans people, and to uncover their co-constitutive character. However, theorising trans oppression in/through feminist IPE will require scholars to engage more deeply with queer and trans theorising, specifically accounts of heteronormativity and the body, and to relinquish the cis-normative attachments that shape some accounts of gender, capitalism and social reproduction, notably within the Marxist feminist tradition.

"Queer Activism in Africa" published on by Oxford University Press.

The 'reflexive turn' transcended disciplinary boundaries within the social sciences. Feminist scholars in particular have taken up its core concerns, establishing a wide-ranging literature on reflexivity in feminist theory and practice. In this paper, I contribute to this scholarship by deconstructing the 'story' of my own research as a white, genderqueer, masculine-presenting researcher in Ghana. This deconstruction is based on thirteen months of field research exploring LGBT activism in the capital city of Accra. Using a series of ethnographic vignettes, I examine questions of queer subjectivity, embodiment and self/Other dynamics in the research encounter. Specifically, I interrogate what a reflexive concern for power relations means when researchers share moments of commonality and difference with research participants, here in relation to axes of gender, sexuality, race and class. Finally, I explore the challenge of theorising resistance in light of feminist postcolonial critiques of the politics of representation. I conclude that it is only by locating these tensions and dissonances in the foreground of our inquiries that reflexivity becomes meaningful as a way of rendering knowledge production more accountable and transparent, of practising feminist solidarity, and of excavating our own queer research journeys.

Most scholarship within social reproduction theory focuses on women's paid and unpaid care and domestic work, typically within the global North. Rarely has social reproduction theory grappled with unfree labour in commodity supply chains, particularly in the global South. However, these labour relations also involve gendered power relations that cut across the productive and reproductive realms of the economy, which can be illuminated by social reproduction theory analysis. In this article, we reflect on how social reproduction theory can be used to make sense of unfree labour's role in global supply chains, expanding its geographical scope and the forms of labour exploitation encompassed within it. Conceptually, we harness the insights of social reproduction theory, and Jeffrey Harrod and Robert W Cox's work on 'unprotected work' in the global economy to examine how gendered power relations shape patterns of unfree labour. Empirically, we analyse interview and survey data collected among cocoa workers in Ghana through LeBaron's Global Business of Forced Labour project. We argue that social reproduction theory can move global supply chain scholarship beyond its presently economistic emphasis on the productive sphere and can shed light into the overlaps between social oppression, economic exploitation, and social reproduction.