Working on Margins : an Anthropological Analysis of the Italian Supply Chains in two Eastern European Countries = Travailler sur les marges : Une analyse anthropologique des chaînes d’approvisionnement italiennes dans deux pays est‑européens

By diversifying working methods and conditions, outsourcing on a world scale has led to new production of geographies, complicating the idea of a strictly limited economic area. Based on ethnographic research on Italian firms’ supply chains in Romania and Moldova, the purpose of this article is to show the formation of marginal figures of the European and non-European labour market. In highlighting the strategic role of borders, I seek to anthropologically deconstruct the concept of the division of labour, showing the strategies of multiplication and diversification of work processes in the global production network. These processes contain programmes, institutions and economic development practices analysed here as classifications that produce representation and finally the presence of low-cost labour.