Migrant Labor and State Power: Vietnamese Workers in Malaysia and Vietnam

Drawing on Foucault’s concepts of biopolitical subject formation and governmentality, this article seeks to understand transnational state power and how Vietnamese migrant workers negotiate within a transnational framework both while working in Malaysia and upon their return to Vietnam. By conducting multi-sited interviews in Vietnam and Malaysia between 2008 and 2015, we contribute to the transnational labor migration literature by focusing on Vietnamese factory and construction workers in Malaysia and their resistance to transnational state power. We argue that these two emerging economies, as part of the neoliberal world, use their systems, media, and technologies to produce and manage citizens (in Vietnam) and non-citizen subjects (migrants in Malaysia) who comply with labor export policy and foreign worker policy, respectively. These two states ensure both government and individual accumulation to sustain their power. Meanwhile, Vietnamese migrant subjects negotiate their roles, resist when necessary, and at times, even benefit from overseas labor migration

Book Review: Assembling Women: The Feminization of Global Manufacturing . By Teri L. Caraway

Teri Caraway’s study of Indonesian labor in workplaces such as the garment, textile, electronics, timber, tobacco, and automobile industries is a contribution to the literature on the feminization of factory work in Southeast Asia. Overall, the book, presented in six chapters, questions why female inequality in the workforce continues. Why do women outnumber male workers in export-processing industries while the same numbers of women are not represented in capital-intensive industries? According to Caraway, political economists believe that once women entered the paid labor force, they would eventually equal male workers in number, but political economy analysis has not been able to explain why this did not occur. Her analysis takes a gendered and multilevel methodological approach and uses gender as a category of political economic analysis (p. 5) in order to explain women’s continued inequality in the workforce

Sex trafficking to the Federated Malay States 1920-1940: from migration for prostitution to victim or criminal?

This article analyses the relationships between the colonial government in the Federated Malay States (FMS), international social movement organisations, the League of Nations and sex trafficking. While there is considerable scholarship on social movement organisations and the League of Nations, far less is known about the links between internationalism, colonialism and sex trafficking. After the First World War, trafficking became the focus of social movement organisations and the League of Nations, but colonial regulation of prostitution and tolerated brothels complicated international responses to trafficking. Colonial administrators saw prostitution as an essential service, whereas feminist and international social movement organisations saw prostitution as an impetus for trafficking. This article engages with newspaper reports, colonial correspondence and Chinese petitions, archival material from social movement organisations, and reports by the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene, the League of Nations and the Chinese Secretariat to extend the literature on the historiography of trafficking and the British Empire

Corporate Social Responsibility, Human Rights and Clothing Workers in Bangladesh and Malaysia

The brand-name fashion industry creates high levels of competition in developing countries, leading to labour exploitation and human rights abuse. The 2013 World Investment Report found that pushing prices down in global value chains has led to significant negative social and environmental impacts . In response, fashion corporations and retail giants introduced codes of conduct to address consumer concerns and stop any damage to brand reputation. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has had some success in preventing child labour but little if any victory in allowing workers the right to organise and bargain collectively. In fact, CSR has been blamed for undermining the role of trade unions and privatising labour rights. In this article, I trace the history of CSR from shareholders to a human rights model. I highlight tensions between national accumulation policies, company profits, shareholders and CSR on the one hand, and migrant workers and human rights on the other

Global commodity chains in crisis: the garment industry in Malaysia

This paper examines the garment industry in Malaysia from the 1970s to the present. It looks at the strategies employed by manufacturers to cope with both the end of the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) and the effects of the global economic crisis on the industry in Malaysia. The garment industry in Malaysia is situated on the periphery and is almost totally reliant on contracts from the United States (US) and Europe for its survival. Since the global economic recession, contraction in the consumption of garments in these countries has translated into factory closures and lay-offs in Malaysia. According to industry experts, the apparel sector is no longer competitive and unless manufacturers increase levels of technology the industry will struggle to survive. Trade associations in Malaysia and ASEAN countries argue that a regional strategy is necessary to cope with increasing levels of competition from China and other parts of the world

Overcoming enmity amongst the workers? A critical examination of the MTUC\u27s stance on the migrant worker question in Malaysia

Foreign migrant workers have been an integral part of the Malaysian economy since independence. Yet their position in the Malaysian workforce and in Malaysian society is most precarious. This paper examines public and union reactions to foreign migrant workers. It argues that government policies have resulted in uncertainty for both local and foreign workers and encouraged enmity between them. The paper concludes that Malaysian trade unions must take a more proactive stance on the migrant worker question

The challenges of fieldwork: researchers, clothing manufacturers, and migrant workers

This paper highlights the unique challenges faced by researchers conducting a multi-sited study of the clothing industry in Malaysia. The study involves workers and manufacturers in multiple sites in industrial suburbs across Malaysia. The workers in the study, mostly female migrant workers, are considered to be a vulnerable group because they are subjected to harsh discipline under company contract conditions and state immigration laws, as well as difficulties faced within an industrial urban environment. Feminist principles were adopted in the multi-sited ethnography with the aim of facilitating connections among different subjects and a more equal and caring relationship between ethnographer and the subjects being researched. Stacey (1988) asserts that generic ethnographic research should follow feminist methodological principles such as egalitarianism, reciprocity, and reflectivity, although simultaneously she argues that the closer the relationship between ethnographer and subjects, the greater the likelihood of exploitation. In the case of the author\u27s research, applying feminist principles was for the most part successful although it was difficult to develop close personal relationships with the migrant workers studied because of the multiplicity of sites, the difficulties in locating a migrant worker community, coupled with the short time workers spent away from the factory. In terms of the manufacturers interviewed in this study, the author developed relationships of trust with some, but maintaining trust and transparency with others within a corporatist network of manufacturers became more challenging as the fieldwork progressed. Moreover, the paper raises some of the tensions specific to feminist principles and some relevant to multi-sited ethnographic research