Rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar, Covid-19, and agrarian movements

Abstract

This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. This requires a rethinking of the role of land, not as a factor in either production or social reproduction, but as a central component in both spheres simultaneously. The question is not ‘whether’ it is necessary and desirable to forge multi-class coalitions and struggles against external capital, while not losing sight of the exploitative relations within rural communities and the household; rather, the question is ‘how’ to achieve this. It will require a messy recursive process, going back and forth between theoretical exploration and practical politics.

Progressive politics and populism: Classes of labour and rural–urban political sociology—An introduction to the special issue

“…Their positions have overlaps, but there are differences of emphasis, which are important because they have strategic implications. This brief outline of the overlaps and differences in their perspectives will draw on their wider work, taking in (here and elsewhere in the text) several other of Bernstein's (1988Bernstein's ( , 2001Bernstein's ( , 2006Bernstein's ( , 2010Bernstein's ( , 2018 papers, as well as Borras's (2001) earlier work on agrarian movements in the Philippines, his co-authored book on transnational agrarian movements (Edelman & Borras, 2016), and recent co-authored work on Myanmar, which focuses primarily on rural-based migrant labour (Borras et al, 2022).…”

“…This special issue analyses the prospects for a progressive politics, primarily from the perspective of rural regions in the Global South. There have been a number of significant recent contributions on this perennial question—notably in articles by Borras (2020) and Borras et al (2022), and more generally within the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (e.g. Scoones et al, 2018).…”

“…Bernstein, 2006, p. 456). Both also recognize that social reproduction increasingly transcends the agrarian, rural, and urban and that the search for a progressive politics must do likewise (Bernstein, 2006; Borras et al, 2022). This is clearly not a debate reducible to Leninist or populist perspectives on agrarian change, within which the former focuses on differentiation in the countryside and the latter on a stable base of middle peasants or family farmers—with related implications for political strategies and class alliances.…”

Three populisms and two dead ends: Variants of agrarian populism in Thailand

“…This takes on a transnational dimension, as agribusiness expansion in Laos fuels the outmigration of young rural dwellers to become workers in Thailand, which in turn accelerates social differentiation in rural Laos (Barney, 2012, p. 81). Borras et al (2022, p. 3) have unearthed similar trans‐local networks of workers from Myanmar, who are “rurally rooted” in villages where access to land, in addition to a productive subsistence element, takes a social reproduction function as space for housing, schools, clinics, or socialization.…”

“…This article is an analysis of agrarian populism in Thailand and cannot explore the difficult questions of how to organize rural-urban workers. We recommend the discussion of Myanmar migrant workers byBorras et al (2022) and their thoughtful conclusions, particularly on the relationship between land and labour, though we also note that they have much more to say about land than about the politics of organizing around pay and precarious working conditions which are just as relevant for the social reproduction of workers.…”