The politics of consent in the casino economy

Abstract

Purpose Accompanying the casino liberalization in Macau has been the massive increase in the importation of migrant workers to drive the labour-intensive, service-oriented economic growth there. Nevertheless, the employment of migrant workers has become an intensely contentious issue. The traditional pluralist approach to migration policy has highlighted a mismatch between restrictive policy pronouncements and actual expansive outcomes. This mismatch has resonated strongly in Macau, where the number of migrant workers skyrocketed in the last decade in spite of repeated guarantees from the government of the adoption of a protectionist labour policy. The pluralist approach has attributed the mismatch to strong constituencies supporting more immigration. The purpose of this paper is to dispute this and maintain that the Macau Government is a capitalist state committed to increasing labour importation to facilitate wealth accumulation. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a qualitative approach based on extensive research of news and media reports, facilitated by a close observation of political developments. Findings The Macau Government started, in 2005, to talk about reforming its labour importation programme by adding a migrant worker levy, a ratio mechanism and a six-month waiting period. This paper investigates how the capitalist state navigated the reform process by promising changes and building consent with the working classes. The author maintains that “a game of protection” has been constructed and played to secure the consent of the local working classes for the migrant worker programme. Originality/value Very little literature is available that has studied the changes made to the migrant worker system in Macau. This paper will help to close this gap.

Multi-ethnic Macao: from global village to migrant metropolis

“…As political scientist Alex Choi has pointed out, this new mode of globalization is characterized economic hyper-growth that is capitalintensive, labor-intensive, place-bound and service-oriented. Owing to Macao's small size, this growth has had to be funded by external investment, built and staffed by non-local labor, and driven by non-local consumers (Choi, 2016).…”

“…The bulk of this population growth has resulted from labor immigration, as the expansion of the casino sector has created enormous demand for labor in the hospitality, construction and service sectors. In 2018, there were just over 180,000 migrant workers in Macao, comprising fully 46 per cent of Macao's employed labor force (Choi, 2016;Sheng and Gu, 2018). Over 60 per cent of these workers (just under 114,000) are from mainland China.…”

“…Alex Choi has pointed out a similar cyclical dynamic in labor protest movements in Macao: locals protest the detrimental effects of casino growthcongested streets, unaffordable housing, environmental degradation, rising crime and corruption, rampant materialism, declining rates of tertiary education, increasing dependence on an industry most people find morally questionable and the growing divide between rich and poorand attribute these effects to the impact of outsiders (both workers and investors) who come to Macao to take advantage of the city's wealth and opportunities but care little about the place. Rather than slowing the hyper-growth (and by extension the dependence on outside forces), the government enacts regulations that pit the interests of locals against those of "outsiders," and in so doing, win the locals' tacit consent to an everfaster pace of development, ever-greater dependence on transnational forces, and everhigher numbers migrant workers (Choi, 2016).…”