‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers

Brickell, Katherine; Lawreniuk, Sabina; Chhom, Theavy; Mony, Reach; So, Hengvotey; McCarthy, Lauren

doi:10.1080/14649365.2022.2055778

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Indeed, the microfinance industry has accumulated massive financial profits even as households struggle to cope with chronic over‐indebtedness (Brickell et al. 2022; Green and Bylander 2021; Natarajan et al. 2019).…”

Section: Austerity Financial Inclusion and Debtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Financial Inclusion or Subordination? The Monetary Politics of Debt in Cambodia

Green

2023

Antipode

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Financial inclusion is a leading driver of household debt across the global South. Although critical geographers have analysed this debt through the lens of financialisation, few have examined it in terms of monetary politics. This is a salient issue, because poorer nations often have limited control over their monetary policy due to their dependence on foreign currencies, which can adversely affect the structure of their financial markets. Building on the concept of monetary dependency from scholarship on financial subordination, I analyse the monetary politics of debt in Cambodia. Drawing on elite interviews and ethnographic research, I argue that Cambodia's extreme monetary dependence on the US dollar has shaped monetary and fiscal policies that compel poorer households to take on private debt to pay for their basic needs. This paper advances critical geographies of debt and development by studying financial subordination and its impact on financial inclusion in the global South.

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Section: Austerity Financial Inclusion and Debtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Financial Inclusion or Subordination? The Monetary Politics of Debt in Cambodia

Green

2023

Antipode

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“…Here then, but in different ways conceived of originally by Berlant, the body becomes communed in the survival work and production of felt resilience. Garment workers typically cope with economic precarity not through the compensatory pleasures of eating excessively, but rather through the unpleasurable denial of food (Brickell et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Reduced Fates Of the Body During The Covid‐19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That garment workers are going hungry with the COVID‐19 pandemic in Cambodia (Brickell et al, 2022 ) is an experience more widely shared in other countries, including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Lesotho and Myanmar (Kyritsis et al, 2020 ). In Cambodia, the country's two other most important economic sectors, construction and tourism, were also heavily impacted and in 2021 strict lockdowns left what was described by some commentators in the Cambodian press as a humanitarian crisis with whole areas of Phnom Penh barricaded in for weeks on end.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reduced ‘fates of the body’ and ‘production of value for others’ in the global garment industry: Thinking with Berlant on eating and hunger during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Brickell

Lawreniuk

2022

Geographical Journal

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As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020, #PAYYOURWORKERS became widely circulated by trade unions and labour rights organisations campaigning for immediate support for garment workers globally. Photographed in the modest rental rooms which they both sleep and cook in, affected Cambodian garment workers held up the rallying hashtag on hand-written cardboard signs. The campaign's landing page (https://www.payyo urwor kers.org) featured one such worker and led with the message: 'Garment workers can't feed their families. Fashion brands are turning their backs'. Well known brands had contravened contractual obligations to cancel orders and withhold payments as demand for clothing in the US and Europe plummeted and raw material supply chains were severed. Between March 2020 and March 2021, it is estimated that garment workers were deprived of $11.85 billion in income (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2021). During this time, millions of workers worldwide were suspended from their positions with little or no pay and others permanently lost their jobs as factories closed (Lawreniuk, 2020). Flexibilisation, already synonymous with the global garment industry, was being intensified at speed by brand responses to the pandemic, which prioritised the profit bottom line over workers' welfare.Two-years of longitudinal research across the pandemic with the same cohort of 200 garment workers in Cambodia sought to understand and amplify their experiences of navigating its economic impacts (see www.refas hions tudy.org).

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“…Despite the industry's celebration of the female entrepreneurial farmer, many of the women repaying microfinance debt in Cambodia actually labor in the country's garment industry (Brickell et al, 2022; CATU et al ., 2020). For the past decade, young women migrating to work in this industry have supported the microfinance sector's growth by remitting their wages to help repay loans taken out by their family members to pay for the costs of production and social reproduction (Green and Estes, 2019, 2022; Bevacqua, 2017; Natarajan and Brickell, 2022).…”

Section: Cambodia's Duplicitous Debtscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the past decade, young women migrating to work in this industry have supported the microfinance sector's growth by remitting their wages to help repay loans taken out by their family members to pay for the costs of production and social reproduction (Green and Estes, 2019, 2022; Bevacqua, 2017; Natarajan and Brickell, 2022). So while the IFC and its Cambodian partners celebrate the female entrepreneur, debt has actually hastened the footloose proletarianization of the countryside (Brickell et al ., 2022; Bylander, 2014). Moreover, rural household social reproduction, financed by microfinance debt, is now connected to distant, precarious labor markets.…”

Section: Cambodia's Duplicitous Debtscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Duplicitous debtscapes: Unveiling social impact investment for microfinance

Green

2022

Environ Plan A

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Social impact investment for microfinance has become a dominant form of poverty regulation in the global south. These investments aim to alleviate poverty by extending financial services like credit to the world's poor, particularly smallholder farmers. The International Finance Corporation is a major player in this effort. It has channeled finance capital to microfinance institutions around the world through its Social Bond Program, among other mechanisms. In this paper, I analyze how the International Finance Corporation's impact investments depend on an ideological “way of seeing” poverty, informed by representations of agrarian landscapes, which mystifies the exploitative relations of microfinance debt. I term these representations duplicitous debtscapes. My analysis is based on research about Cambodia, where the International Finance Corporation is a key supporter of the country's biggest microfinance institutions. I argue that the duplicitous debtscapes of the International Finance Corporation and its Cambodian partners veil the conditions of production and social reproduction faced by indebted smallholder farmers, thereby legitimizing capital accumulation for impact investors. Yet these debtscapes are also contested. Thus, I further argue that the outcomes of debtscapes are shaped by the struggle over their representation. By studying impact investment in terms of the visual politics of debt, this paper contributes to scholarship about the financialization of poverty in development and financial geography.

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‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers

Cited by 18 publications

References 48 publications

Financial Inclusion or Subordination? The Monetary Politics of Debt in Cambodia

Financial Inclusion or Subordination? The Monetary Politics of Debt in Cambodia

Reduced ‘fates of the body’ and ‘production of value for others’ in the global garment industry: Thinking with Berlant on eating and hunger during the COVID‐19 pandemic

Duplicitous debtscapes: Unveiling social impact investment for microfinance

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