Introduction

It is estimated that more than eighty per cent of world trade is controlled by multinationals headquartered in the Global North. Intan Suwandi’s book introduces the concept of “global labour-value chains” to describe how globalised production entrenches imperial dominance by transferring surplus value from the Global South to the Global North. Rather than levelling the playing field, multinational companies have imposed “economic” and “flexible” practices on contractors in the Global South, enforcing low wages, insecure conditions, and hyper-productivity while retaining profits in the Global North. Suwandi argues these strategies are derived from colonial legacies and represent “new economic imperialism”.

These dynamics are sustained by legal frameworks that allow “governance at a distance”. In the context of supply chains, this refers to the outsourcing of regulatory power to industry associations or private compliance systems, enabling multinationals to legally and morally distance themselves from supplier abuses. Yet at the end of 2024, the United Kingdom’s (UK) Court of Appeal’s decision in Limbuindicates that the law is starting to close this gap and impose accountability on UK multinationals for abuses inflicted abroad by strengthening the legal position of workers bringing claims. The UK Supreme Court’s 2025 rejection of the application to appeal cements the Limbu precedent. This development offers hope that English courts are an attractive jurisdiction for workers and can offer a step towards tackling new economic imperialism in global labour-value chains.

This blog post examines the implications of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Limbu. The case recognises that England is the appropriate forum in which to determine the migrant workers’ claims as opposed to Malaysia, which is where the abuses occurred. Limbu affirms and extends the reasoning in the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling in Okpabiwhich provided guidance on the liability of parent companies for unlawful practices that occur in foreign subsidiaries. While this case signals an important step towards holding multinationals accountable, we argue that more still needs to be done to prevent “new economic imperialism” from flourishing in global production.

New Economic Imperialism

The phrase “new economic imperialism” builds on an older tradition of economic imperialism that described the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century expansion of European powers through formal empire, colonial monopolies, and direct control of resources and labour. “Old” economic imperialism relied on overt political domination through chartered companies, such as the East India Company, which extracted surplus through territorial conquest and colonial governance. Thus, Suwandi’s notion of “new economic imperialism” refers to the continuation of these extractive dynamics through ownership of contractual subordination and global production networks in which the metropole firms dictate terms to “colonised” suppliers.

The Limbu Case – Dyson’s Global Labour-Value Chain

Limbu concerns 24 Nepali and Bangladeshi migrant workers (the respondents) who were trafficked to Malaysia and subjected to forced labour, violence and torture, exploitative living, and unsafe working conditions while manufacturing components and parts for Dyson. The respondents brought the case against Dyson Technology Limited, Dyson Limited (UK-based companies) and Dyson Malaysia (together the appellants).

The migrants were subject to this treatment at two factories operated by Malaysian-domiciled suppliers (ATA Industrial and Jabco). ATA Industrial supplied around one-third of Dyson’s global “box build production”. Among other claims, the respondents allege that the appellants are liable for negligence for breach of duty to ensure the respondents did not suffer from the abuse.

Dyson’s supply chain reflects what Suwandi terms a “global labour-value chain”. Unlike other global value chain theories which focus on the fragmentation and coordination of production, Suwandi’s work recentres labour. She explains how northern monopolies capture surplus value by shifting production to low-wage economies and dictate terms through contracts, pricing, and codes. Suwandi’s empirical analysis of unit labour costs shows that countries most integrated into global supply chains (China, India, Indonesia) also have the lowest wage-productivity ratios, evidencing “systemic super-exploitation”.

Under Britain’s colonial system of indirect rule, authority was exercised through local intermediaries who administered imperial policy on the empire’s behalf, allowing Britain to profit from control without formal governance. After the abolition of slavery, similar dynamics persisted through indentured labour systems, where workers were nominally free but bound by contracts that entrenched dependency and coercion. Dyson’s supply chain mirrors these historical patterns of imperialism; value is extracted through foreign subsidiaries and “arm’s length” contractors (companies that are legally independent of Dyson but economically reliant on its contracts and bound by production standards), such as ATA Industrial and Jabco. This structuring obscures direct corporate control while creating the primary sites for production and exploitation.

The Implications of Limbu for Tackling New Economic Imperialism

The Court of Appeal case was not focused on the merits of the workers’ claims, but rather on whether England or Malaysia was the appropriate jurisdiction for hearing the claims. Dyson sought to assert forum non conveniens arguments (inconvenient forum grounds) to argue that Malaysia was a more suitable jurisdiction to hear the case because this is where the events took place. The forum of the case is significant because of the numerous inequality of arms factors faced by the respondents if the case proceeded in Malaysia. Inequality of arms refers to the imbalances in procedural opportunities and resources available to parties in a trial, mimicking the same hierarchies that underpin global labour-value chains which systematically disadvantage workers. As Roorda notes, migrant workers rarely have equal capacity to litigate against multinational corporations, including a lack access to evidence and information, physical and mental burdens, and the financial barriers involved with litigation abroad.

To determine the appropriate forum, the courts applied the two-stage test established in Spiliada(but did so in a single holistic exercise) to consider whether England or Malaysia had the “most real and substantial connection” to the claim. The inequality of arms considerations are incorporated into this analysis. The Court of Appeal held that although the alleged abuse occurred in Malaysia, the “centre of gravity” of the case lay in England because Dyson UK exerted a high degree of control over the operations and working conditions at the Malaysian suppliers and promulgated various mandatory policies regarding worker conditions. The court also considered the lack of equivalent standard legal representation and practical trial difficulties that would arise if the case was heard in Malaysia as factors to support England as the appropriate forum.

Unusually, the appellants had also given a series of undertakings to fund the respondent’s case in Malaysia ostensibly to overcome the inequality of arms concerns. Malaysia would have been a more attractive forum for Dyson since the claimants would likely have faced significant barriers to justice in the Malaysian courts, including the absence of “no-win-no-fee” legal representation which was available in England. However, in a detailed six-point rejection, Popplewell LJ concluded that these undertaking were unsuitable since they would create a conflict of interest.

If the undertakings were allowed, Dyson would effectively retain control over the litigation funding, As such, Dyson could effectively determine the scope and extent of the respondent’s legal costs which might be “carefully crafted to define their extent” and influence the success of the case, The undertakings could create opportunities for disputes over whether expenses where “reasonable and necessary” and to strategic refusals of disbursements, thereby allowing Dyson to gain tactical advantage in proceedings under a guise of strengthening equality of arms between the parties. Poppelwell LJ’s reasoning has already influenced subsequent cases, including in Da Silva and others v Brazil Iron Limited, whereby undertakings were refused for similar reasons cited in Limbu.

Limbu indicates that UK courts are increasingly willing to hold UK-based multinationals accountable for harms arising within their overseas supply chains, particularly given the respondent’s claims for forced labour and dangerous conditions are likely to have a real prospect of success. This development continues a promising line of jurisprudence referred to as the “Holy Trinity”, consisting of Vedanta v Lungowe, Chandler v Cape plc, and Okpabi v Shell. Limbu extends this trajectory, transforming the “Holy Trinity” trio into the “Four Evangelists” of UK parent company liability.

Situated within Suwandi’s framework of global labour-value chains, these decisions challenge the legal conditions that have enabled multinationals to externalise risks and extract surplus value from workers in the Global South while concentrating profits and control in the Global North. The Court of Appeal’s rejection of Dyson’s arguments for undertakings as a means to resist jurisdiction underscores that companies cannot rely on their economic power to shift claimants’ cases to foreign jurisdictions in order to evade accountability.

But More Needs to be Done

In Limbu, one of the reasons that the Court determined that Dyson UK was the “principal protagonist” is because they were responsible for designing and overseeing working condition policies in its subsidiaries and contractors. However, this could mean that multinationals deliberately distance themselves from supply chain oversight and withdraw from voluntary reporting (or keep it undocumented) to avoid the court finding the parent company responsible for the subsidiary and their contractors.

The UK’s Trade Union Congress has proposed adopting a “failure to prevent” model, based on Section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010, as a means to counteract “governance at a distance”.  Section 7 makes it a criminal offence for a commercial organisation to fail to prevent bribery by an associated person acting on their behalf, regardless of where in the world the conduct occurs. Imposing a comparable duty on multinational corporations to prevent human rights violations committed in their supply chains would better ensure that parent companies cannot rely on contractual distance or private auditing mechanisms to evade liability.

Additionally, policy solutions need to move beyond top-down corporate mandates towards proper engagement with Global South communities to address the structural inequities of global labour-value chains. This would include prioritising local agency and insights from workers in global labour-value chains over enforcing rigid, top-down mandates from externally defined regimes derived from the Global North.

Conclusion

Global labour-value chains are creating a new form of economic imperialism. The Court of Appeal’s decision in Limbu provides workers with a stronger standing in cases when bringing claims about abuses faced in multinationals’ overseas subsidiaries’ suppliers. However, without stronger obligations, multinationals’ controlling global labour-value chains could still remain resistant to legal accountability, allowing new economic imperialism to flourish in the shadow of the law.

Featured Image Credits: Shady Sharify / Better Images of AI / CC BY 4