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.
There is a considerable body of academic and activist research that studies the prevalence of precariousness in contemporary societies. It goes by many names that are often interchangeable, including precarious work, precarity, informalization, and casualization. These are typically rooted in emerging theories of labor and work that temporally correspond to the globalization of production, distribution, and consumption in the neoliberal era. This article examines new ways of looking at the global economic system as a whole while focusing on the diverse experiences associated with precarious work. We address prominent social movements and scholarly responses to changes in work and life, including transforming politics and policy initiatives.
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