Case Studies in Global Trade

Case Study: Coffee, Capital, and “Conscious Consumerism”

What Starbucks doesn’t tell you about where your latte comes from.

Overview:

• Seattle is the global home of Starbucks— a company that brands itself as a leader in ethical sourcing, green business, and social responsibility. But what does it mean when the world’s largest coffee company says it’s “ethical”? Who picks the beans that go into your morning drink? How much do they earn? And how does this connect to labor conditions right here in Seattle, where Starbucks workers have been organizing for better pay and union rights?
• This case study invites students to critically investigate Starbuck’s supply chain and labor practices— from coffee farmers in Latin America and Africa to baristas in Capitol Hill. It challenges them to go beyond branding and question what ethical really means in a world structured by profit and inequality.

Readings:

• Ethical Sourcing- Starbucks website
• Starbucks: slave and child labour found at certified coffee farms in Minas Gerais- Reporter Brasil
• “Ethical Consumption” Used to Mean Something More Than Feeling Smug About Your Purchases- Jacobin Magazine
• Starbucks sued for slave labor- Liberation News
• PLN editor Paul Wright quoted in WA article re Starbucks using prison labor – Seattle Weekly 2001
• Starbucks awarded seal of good practices to producer who could benefit from eviction

Videos:

The Human Cost of Coffee: Rescuing slave workers in Brazil’s farms (AlJazeera)- 25 min

Discussion Questions:

• What does “fair trade” mean to you? Is it meaningful in this case?
• Who benefits most from the coffee trade? Who benefits least?
• What connections can we make between colonialism and the modern coffee industry?
• How does Starbucks use its Seattle image to sell an ethical brand?
• Should Starbucks baristas earn more? What does their struggle have in common with the farmers who pick the beans? How are they different?

Activity Suggestions:

1. Starbucks vs Reality: Critical Branding Analysis
   • In pairs, students analyze Starbucks marketing on ethical sourcing, “Coffee & Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices,” and social impact. Compare this with:
     • Testimonies from coffee farmers
     • Interviews with unionizing workers
   • Create a T-chart: What Starbucks Says vs What’s Actually Happening
2. Socratic Seminar or Structured Debate
   • “Can there be ethical consumption under capitalism?”
   • Use quotes from assigned readings to support arguments. Encourage students to take different roles (e.g. Starbucks CEO, Colombian coffee farmer, Seattle barista, climate activist, customer)
   • Suggested Guiding Questions:
     • What do we mean when we say something is “Ethical”?
     • Who gets to decide what counts as “Fair trade”?
     • Do companies like Starbucks use “ethical” labels to hide exploitation?
     • Can consumer choices lead to systemic change, or do they just make us feel better?
     • What role should workers and farmers play in shaping trade policies?
3. Direct Trade Coffee Roasters in Seattle
   • Introduce Key concepts:
     • Fair Trade: involves certification and compliance with certain labor/environmental standards, often monitored by third parties
     • Direct Trade: less regulated but can involve closer relationships between roasters and farmers, often emphasizing higher payments, quality, and transparency
     • Encourage students to consider: Which model offers more real power to farmers? Which relies more on branding?
   • Local research project:
     • Assign students to investigate 1-2 local Seattle coffee roasters
     • Research question ideas:
       • Where do they source their beans from?
       • Do they use terms like “ethical,” “direct trade,” or “fair trade”?
       • Do they provide transparent information about farmer relationships, pricing, or sustainability?
       • How do they describe the role of the farmer vs. the company?
       • What is the price of a standard cup of coffee?
     • Suggested Roasters to Start with (Seattle):
       • Slate Coffee Roasters
       • Caffe Vita
       • Kuma Coffee
       • Ladro Roasting
     • Class Share
       • Have students present their findings in a gallery walk or short presentations
       • Guiding discussion:
         • Is “direct trade” a more just model, or just another form of branding?
         • What power do small businesses have in reshaping the coffee industry?
         • How do these alternatives still exist within our current global economy?

• Notes: These activities are not about giving students a single “right” answer, but about fostering critical conciousness. Encourage students to hold multiple truths at once— that laborers in both the Global North and South are exploited, that ethical business models are possible but limited, and that collective action (not just consumer choice) is often the most powerful response to injustice.

Case Study: Who Cares? Domestic Labor and the Global Care Chain

• Whether it’s cleaning homes, cooking meals, or caring for children and the elderly, domestic labor keeps the world running. But this work— mostly done by women of color, immigrants, and working-class women — is invisible, underpaid, and undervalued.
• This case study looks at the global care chain: the way domestic work and care work is outsourced and passed along international lines, often from poorer countries to wealthier ones. As women from the Global South migrate to take care of families in the Global North, they often leave their own children and families behind, creating a chain of care and sacrifice.
• As neoliberal social policy and global restructuring have led to falling wages and have made it necessary for both parents to work, middle-class women now have to face what poor women have long had to struggle with: balancing paid employment and housework. Middle-class women in the global north have relied on less privileged women to employ migrant women to resolve this dilemma, which is made possible by the unequal global relations of power, colonialism, and structural adjustment policies.
• For students in working-class and poor households — especially those with parents, aunties, or siblings working in domestic, custodial, or elder care — this case study invites them to see this labor as valuable and political, not just “something we do to get by.”

Readings/Websites:

• For instructors:
  • Rethinking Care: Arlie Hochschild and the Global Care Chain by Premilla Nadasen
  • Global care chains: a critical introduction by Nicola Yeates (Global Commission on International Migration)
• Seattle Domestic Workers Ordinance
  • Seattle’s Domestic Worker’s bill of rights that was passed in 2018, giving nannies, gardners, and housecleaners guaranteeing minimum wage and rest breaks.
  • Casa Latina was one of the main advocacy groups that helped get this bill passed. Located in Seattle, they work to “advance the power and well-being of Latinx immigrants through employment, education, and community organizing.”¹
• National Domestic Workers Alliance
  • Lots of resources on policy solutions, testimonies, and current campaigns.
• “Servants of Globalization” by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Chapter 1 excerpt)
  • Informational study on the global migration of Filipino domestic workers

Videos:

Key Concepts to Cover (for notes or mini-lecture):

• Global care chain: A series of personal links between people across the world based on the paid or unpaid work of caring
• Feminization of migration: increasing trend of women migrating for domestic and caregiving jobs
• Transnational motherhood: when women must parent across borders due to work
  • Hochschild describes a global care chain as entailing: “an older daughter from a poor family who cares for her siblings while her mother works as a nanny caring for the children of a migrating nanny who, in turn, cares for the child of a family in a rich country.”
• Emotional labor: Managing emotions to care for others (often unpaid)
• Reproductive labor: work that sustains life— childrearing, cleaning, caregiving
• Care Drain: the loss of caregiving labor in sending countries as women migrate abroad

Activities & Discussions

1. “Whose labor made your day possible?”
   • Start class with a writing or pair discussion: Think about your morning. Who made it possible for you to get to school today? Who made your food, cleaned the space, cared for you or others? Paid or unpaid?
   • Map responses on the board. Introduce the concept of invisible labor.
2. Testimonies and Reflection
   • Read or listen to testimonies from domestic workers. Then discuss:
     • What are these women giving up?
     • Why is this work not valued like other work?
     • How is this connected to racism, sexism, and colonialism?
3. Local Connection– Who Cleans Our Schools?
   • Option 1: Custodial labor walk-through + observation
     • Use as a guided walk or photo journaling activity (with care and consent)
     • Ask students to quietly walk the halls (or imagine the spaces they’ve already passed through) and reflect:
       • Who cleans the bathrooms? The floors? The cafeteria?
       • When do they work? Before school? After? During class?
       • Are their names known? Are they greeted or thanked?
       • What assumptions do people make about their work?
     • Debrief together. Create a “Map of labor” of the school, tracing who sustains it.
   • Option 2: Worker interview or Panel
     • If possible, invite a school janitor, maintenance worker, lunch worker, or local union rep for a student-led Q&A (with prep and guidance)
     • Suggested student questions:
       • What does a day in your job look like?
       • What do you wish people knew about your work?
       • Have you ever felt disrespected or invisible?
       • What would make your work more sustainable?
       • Are you unionized or organizing with others?
4. Reflection Prompts (individual):
   • “Do you know someone who does care work— paid or unpaid? What do you think would happen if they stopped doing that labor tomorrow?”
   • “If care work is the work that makes all other work possible, why is it so invisible and underpaid?”
5. Home & Community Reflection
   • Students journal or discuss:
     • “Who provides care in your life— at home, in your neighborhood, in your community?”
     • “Have you ever done care work (watching siblings, cooking, helping)? Was it valued?”
   • Use this to draw out how working-class families sustain life through collective, often unpaid care, even in the absence of wealth.
6. Send a Letter to Congress
   • Have students send a letter to Congress in support of the National Domestic Worker Bill of Rights
   • National Domestic Workers Alliance has page to directly send a letter (requires personal information): https://act.domesticworkers.org/a/tell-your-mocs-co-sponsor-domestic-workers-bill-rights?ms=ndwaweb-takeaction

Discussion Questions:

• Why do some families hire domestic workers? Why do others become them?
• Who has the power to “outsource” care, and who doesn’t?
• What emotional toll does this take on migrant caregivers and their families?
• How is this issue connected to immigration policy, racism, and capitalism?
• Should care work be paid more? Protected by unions? Valued as skilled labor?
• How do families without money find ways to care for each other? What does this teach us?
• What would a world that respected caregiving look like?
• Can we imagine a world where care is at the center of the economy, not the bottom?