Global Work, Surplus Labor, and the Precarious Economies of the Border

Abstract

This paper focuses on the recent emergence of regional production networks and border industrial zones, the labor migrations they are generating, and their consequences for “surplus populations” in the Greater Mekong Subregion (mainland Southeast Asia). In this region the textile and garment industry is employing increasing numbers of workers in border areas on flexible and highly precarious work “contracts”. To understand these emergent labor formations we focus on three scales of analysis through a case study from the Thailand–Burma border. We focus on initiatives led by the Asia Development Bank, accompanying subregional political groupings which aim to facilitate capital flows and trade by reducing transaction time and cost, and a case study of labor recruitment and employment practices in one border town. In examining these three scales, we question the value of characterizing such trans‐national, state‐led, authoritarian, and racialized labor formations as neoliberal.

Social Margins and Precarious Work In Vietnam

“…This has been most noticeable in urban and periurban industrial areas. State-run media have generally portrayed these workers' protests in a positive light, and for these and other reasons the state is less inclined to react with heavy policing, crackdowns, and even violence against protest leaders, which are common in neighboring Cambodia and Thailand (Arnold & Pickles, 2011;Arnold & Toh, 2010). Vietnam's political context may open space for workers' struggles to mitigate precariousness that is not present in other countries.…”

“…Keeping people in a state of uncertainty is a well-known means of exercising control over them (see Gainsborough, 2009). Internal frontier formation, such as between rural and urban, formal and informal, male and female, or different ethnic groups, has been a means to regulate and control the marginalized and maintain their vulnerability in many contexts (Arnold & Pickles, 2011;Gainsborough, 2009;Walker, 2009). Remnants of the command economy, particularly the household registration system (ho khau), create marginalization and limit access to social and labor protections.…”

Precarity and Social Disintegration: A Relational Concept

“…Conversely, in statesocialist countries, or in South Africa for example, forms of open-ended employment did exist and served as a positive point of reference for workers. Certainly, the central European discussion on precarity needs to be brought into much closer contact with perspectives beyond those of central Europe (see for example von Holdt 2012;Lee/Kofman 2012;Lindell 2010;Webster et al 2008;Munck 2013;Arnold/Pickles 2011). Precarity can mean very different things even within Northern or Southern societies.…”

Dis/articulations and the interrogation of development in GPN research

“…Thus SEZs 'connect' labour and capital but on particular terms (see, for example, Arnold and Pickles, 2011).…”