Migrant Precarity in Asia: ‘Networks of Labour Activism’ for a Rights‐based Governance of Migration

Abstract

This article uses migrant precarity as a lens through which to analyse the issue of mobilization for migrants' rights by civil society. Such mobilization efforts are vital in light of the emergence of global migration governance, which tends to actively constrain considerations for migrants' human and labour rights. Asia's temporary migrants have been identified as a particularly precarious group of workers due to their specific position within the international division of labour, one that is defined by poorly-or unregulated work with insecure legal and residential status. Moreover, with local employment in countries of origin often characterized by informal employment, poor working conditions and unsustainable livelihoods, migrant workers are caught within a protracted precarity that spans life at home and abroad. Stronger normative and organizational links between global migration governance and migrant rights movements are needed to advance decent work agendas within countries of destination, as well as in countries of origin.

On the Coattails of globalization: migration, migrants and COVID-19 in Asia

“…The Asia-Pacific region accounts for 82.5 million or 32 percent of the world's international migrants (half of whom are women), and is home to seven of the world's top ten remittance receiving countries (IOM 2019). This is associated with an increase in South-South migration across the region (Piper, Rosewarne, and Withers 2017). Southeast Asia, the specific region where our research takes place, has one of the highest rates of internal displacement globally, in part due to increasingly frequent and costly environmental disasters and human-induced environmental change, a significant factor in ruralurban migration flows (Miller and Douglass 2018).…”

Exercising associational and networked power through the use of digital technology by workers in global value chains

“…Hence, our point of departure within this literature on GVCs and worker power is to examine collective worker power in a transnational manner to improve working conditions in specific production or factory locations in GVCs. This is in recognition of the increasing importance networks of labour activism --a network of labour activists as opposed to trade unions --have become for transnational labour activism in GVCs (Graz et al, 2019;Merk and Zajak, 2019;Piper et al, 2017;Zajak et al, 2017). Specifically, we focus on two forms of collective worker power, associational power and networked power, and connect them with how digital tools are used in their exercise including transnationally.…”

Law and Precariousness in an Authoritarian State: The Case of Illegal House Construction in Vietnam

“…In Western democracies, neoliberal economic development and the decline of the welfare state have transformed the state of redistributive justice from an egalitarian model to a more individualized, market‐based model of risk management. Discussion of precariousness has centered upon the increasing vulnerability and insecurity of employment and social welfare (Neilson and Rossiter ; Kalleberg ), the temporal and spatial dimensions of precarity (Porta et al ; Armano and Murgia ; Piper, Rosewarne, and Withers ), and the moral and ideological underpinnings of everyday struggles against precarity (Lee ; Stevens ).…”