When injustice or harm is inflicted on someone, it typically triggers outrage among observers, often resulting in calls for policy reforms, law enforcement actions, and punitive measures. This reaction stems from a deep-seated discomfort with witnessing innocent individuals suffer unjustly. As a society, we are highly attuned to injustice, but oddly only when we can identify someone to hold accountable.
Compared with these direct forms of injustice, structural injustice operates differently; it persists subtly, often without those involved fully recognizing their role in sustaining it. Because structural injustice lacks clear perpetrators, it fails to generate the same level of public outrage as visible, direct harm. This creates an unsettling silence around it. Paradoxically, structural injustice is a form of harm that no one deliberately commits, yet it emerges from collective actions that reinforce systemic inequalities. It challenges conventional notions of responsibility, which typically rely on individual intent and agency. Structural injustice is embedded in the everyday structures that produce and perpetuate several forms of unjustified disadvantages. This concept of structural injustice, popularized by Iris Marion Young, forms the foundation of Virginia Mantouvalou’s powerful analysis of the enduring inequalities at the heart of modern labour systems.
Mantouvalou’s investigation underscores the vulnerability of workers, who consistently hold a weaker position than employers within the neoliberal market system. To mitigate this vulnerability and advance social justice, individual and collective labour laws are often implemented to prevent exploitation, guarantee equitable working conditions, and level the playing field in bargaining power. However, Mantouvalou presents cases involving single mothers, low-skilled workers, prison labour, and zero-hours contract workers to illustrate how labour laws, even when well-intentioned, carefully crafted, and properly followed, can still inadvertently perpetuate various forms of harm. Thus, these laws can perpetuate structural injustice, undermining their original purpose. Furthermore, the formal legitimacy conferred by law can validate actions that contribute to structural injustice, making them appear acceptable.
This convoluted relationship, where laws aimed at protection can inadvertently legitimize behaviours that perpetuate harm, is a fascinating and crucial subject for understanding social justice. Mantouvalou presents this multifaceted topic in a way that is both accessible and thought-provoking, appealing not only to lawyers and jurists but also to a broader audience with a keen interest in the intersection between corporate practices and human rights issues, such as the readers of the Business and Human Rights Journal (BHRJ).
Her book is divided into three parts, with the first section using three case studies to illustrate the complex and problematic nature of structural injustice across different scenarios. At the heart of Mantouvalou’s arguments is the ‘state-mediated structures of injustice’ framework, which she uses to analyse specific categories of systemic disadvantages in the workplace in the second part of the book. This part uncovers the common underlying logic that sustains structures of injustice. Finally, the third part focuses on human rights as a foundation for rethinking state responsibility, outlining the obligations to protect vulnerable groups in society and the consequences of failing to uphold these duties. The book’s use of vivid examples, spanning cases such as migrant domestic workers and the care industry, is particularly striking. In all three parts, examples not only compellingly illustrate Mantouvalou’s arguments but also greatly enhance our understanding of her points, making the complex interplay of structural injustice and labour laws accessible and relatable.
Mantouvalou’s analysis builds on evidence that a surprisingly broad spectrum of workers faces heightened vulnerability from the legislation actually intended to protect social justice. One of the book’s key strengths is its expansion of the perspective beyond traditional categories of marginalization, such as gender or race, to include less obvious groups, like workers in captivity or immigration detention, who are often excluded from labour law protections or denied the right to unionize. Beyond these specific work situations, the book also highlights a variety of other groups who, while bearing the brunt of the free-market system, lack sufficient protection. Mantouvalou stresses how factors surrounding labour relations, such as social welfare systems, can exacerbate injustices. For instance, welfare policies that impose obligations to seek and accept work as a condition for state support are common but can create additional layers of vulnerability and eventually inequality and harm.
Mantouvalou bridges the divide between abstract principles of justice and the lived experiences of workers. She critiques conventional labour law paradigms for failing to address structural issues effectively, advocating for a more comprehensive approach that accounts for the broader dynamics of power and inequality. Another key strength of the book lies in her thorough analysis of how legal, economic, and social structures intersect to disadvantage workers, especially those in precarious employment or marginalized groups.
As a management and strategy scholar with no formal background in law or legal studies, I find this perspective deeply inspiring. In management, to the extent that responsibility is considered at all, the focus tends to narrowly centre on the human rights impacts directly attributable to the company itself. Indeed, the entire human rights due diligence process emphasizes assessing and mitigating the impacts that a company and its value chain directly produce. This framing inevitably overlooks broader structural issues that, while significant, fall beyond the direct responsibility of individual companies, thereby neglecting more diffuse societal vulnerabilities. Exploring work and work-related social arrangements through the lens of structural injustice is a perspective that has been vastly ignored in the management discipline, and this omission has likely contributed to the discipline’s blindness to its role in perpetuating injustice.
Moreover, Mantouvalou’s emphasis on a practical, example-rich approach, focusing on policy reforms, strengthening the implementation of human rights, and enhancing (corporate) accountability, gives the book a pragmatic edge that is often lacking in theoretical discussions. Her arguments convincingly reveal that we are not merely addressing peripheral concerns but confronting a symptomatic issue deeply embedded in the structure of work relations. This combination of a strong theoretical framework and real-life cases makes the book an essential read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of these systemic challenges.
Notably, Mantouvalou presents potential solutions by identifying the state as a central actor with a distinct political responsibility to drive change, given its role in facilitating worker vulnerability and exploitability. The key societal challenge, I would argue, is to develop actions that genuinely reflect this responsibility, sparking a critical public debate necessary for achieving meaningful reform. While the book highlights human rights law as a tool to define state responsibilities, catalyse transformation, and enhance transparency around the roles and obligations of key stakeholders, this dimension could have been explored more extensively to fully underscore its transformative potential. Furthermore, while I appreciate her deep engagement with human rights and their potential, it is important to note that human rights are not a new institution. In fact, if they are presented as the solution, it would have been beneficial to analyse why they have often fallen short in addressing the problem. In other words, if human rights are the solution now, why have they not been effective in the past? There is a gap in examining the mechanisms behind both the ineffectiveness and the potential effectiveness of human rights. Even though I concur with Mantouvalou that human rights are the way forward, it remains unclear to me why structural injustice persists despite the existence of this antidote.
In conclusion, Mantouvalou offers a vital reflection on the fundamental mechanisms that produce, maintain, and sustain disadvantages in the workplace. A crucial takeaway is that injustice persists even when no one contributing to these unjust structures does so intentionally. Consequently, we are all potentially part of the problem, even as our continued compliance with existing, well-intentioned, and carefully designed laws may give us the false impression that we are part of the solution. This bias or misconception needs to be confronted, a challenge that cannot be met within the confines of a single academic discipline like law. Instead, meaningful progress can only be made if we direct the same level of outrage toward structural injustice as we do toward direct harm. I am grateful that Mantouvalou has taken a step in this direction with her book. For scholars and practitioners, this book thus serves as a valuable resource that pushes the boundaries of conventional thinking about labour rights. For the general reader, it provides a sobering, yet inspiring exploration of how deeply entrenched injustices can be questioned, challenged, and ultimately dismantled. For readers of the BHRJ, it provides a solid theoretical framework to advance the debate on structural injustice and expand the scope of corporate accountability.
