Contesting Migrant Labour: a Politics of Precarity on the Thai-Myanmar Border

Contesting Migrant Labour: A Politics of Precarity on the Thai-Myanmar Border by Stephen Douglas Campbell A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Anthropology University of Toronto © Copyright by Stephen Douglas Campbell (2015) Contesting Migrant Labour: A Politics of Precarity on the Thai-Myanmar Border Doctor of Philosophy, 2015, Stephen Douglas Campbell, Graduate Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Abstract The global proliferation of export processing zones, linking migrant labour to international markets and global supply chains, has established these sites as critical components of contemporary globalised capitalism. As regulatory enclaves of industrial production, export processing zones are marked by forms of population administration organised around the optimisation of low-waged, flexible labour. This dissertation is a study of the social construction of formal and informal labour regulation at one such regulatory enclave. It focuses on the Mae Sot Special Border Economic Zone in northwest Thailand, where some 200,000 plus Myanmar migrants have been engaged in highly precarious employment in garment and textile manufacturing, agriculture, and service work since the early 1990s. While formal state policy significantly impacts the on-the-ground regulation of migrant labour in Mae Sot, the local situation exhibits a variety of overlapping, formal and informal regulatory regimes. These multiple regimes of regulation are subject to continual processes of contestation, negotiation and compromise, with uncertain effects on Mae Sot’s border capitalism. In order to trace these processes, I present ethnographic accounts of migrants engagement with various state and private actors, including the Mae Sot police, officials of the Thai government’s Labour Protection Office, private passport companies, and non-governmental organisations. I further trace the emergence of migrant social formations, shaped by the particular conditions of low-waged, flexible labour as well as despotic employment practices and coercive policing. The dissertation concludes by following the organisational efforts of a group of migrants employed at one Mae Sot garment factory, as they seek to raise their wages and improve their working conditions over the course of a year. Throughout, I find that migrants’ everyday practices and patterns of struggle are shaped both by the site’s network of governmental rule and by the disciplinary powers of the local police. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation was shaped and made possible by the social relations in which the author was embedded. Out of these, the following are but some of the relations in which I remain thoroughly indebted. First, I offer my utmost gratitude to the many Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand who shared their thoughts, feelings and experiences with me over the course of my research. I only wish this dissertation could make a more significant contribution to addressing the difficult situation in which so many of these individuals are living. I also want to thank all of the staff and volunteers at the migrant-run Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association who enthusiastically supported my research in Mae Sot, and my involvement with the many organising drives and labour rights cases that they supported. Similarly, I am grateful to U Moe Kyo of the Joint Action Committee for Burmese Affairs for his support of my research and for his enthusiastic inclusion of me in the various labour rights cases and organising efforts in which he was involved. For intellectual guidance I gained immeasurably from Tania Li, Chris Krupa, and Andrea Muehlebach. Their insights and suggestions are strewn throughout the pages that follow. Tania has been especially supportive and extremely generous with her time amidst a very busy schedule and her many other academic obligations. For their enduring support over a longer period of time, I am grateful to my parents, Anne and Bruce Campbell. They were both pivotal in pushing me to return to academia to pursue my PhD. And finally, my immeasurable love and appreciation go to Inkyin Khaing (May), Oakar Maung Maung (Matt), and Parami Jade. In case it ever seemed otherwise, please know that I was always grateful to you for pulling me away from academic work. iii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1. The assemblage of migrant labour in Mae Sot 32 Statistical interlude: Class composition of Mae Sot migrants 79 Chapter 2. Border capitalism, disrupted 89 Chapter 3. Migrant formations under coercive policing 129 Chapter 4. Everyday recomposition 164 Chapter 5. Organising under flexibilisation 197 Conclusion 244 References cited 252 iv Introduction A politics of precarity on the Thai-Myanmar border Through to the back of the cremation grounds where the fields of sugarcane begin, Ko Soe and I coast our bicycles to a stop. It is mid-December and the sugarcane stocks are tall now, taller than us. Somewhere amidst these fields Myanmar migrant workers from the nearby KBC garment factory are hiding. We know this because Ko Soe had only minutes ago been talking with one of them by phone. But then the connection had died; presumably this worker’s phone had run out of power. So we dismount and look around for an entrance into the fields. The sugarcane is far too dense to walk through, even if we left our bicycles behind. Uncertain how to proceed, we soon spot a man standing, looking at us from the edge of the fields where some car tracks come to an end. Ko Soe calls out and, as we approach, explains to the man that he too had worked at KBC, having quit only a few months prior. “We’ve come to see the workers’ situation,” he adds. The man, whom we now see to be in his early twenties, leads us down a narrow path walled by stocks of sugarcane. When the trail reaches a small stream we lift our bicycles and carry them along the watercourse until, as directed by our guide, we lay them aside and jump across the brook to an isolated patch of banana trees. It is here that we begin seeing the migrants, bunched together with their baskets of food and clothing, standing, idling, chatting with each other, sitting on mats laid out on the ground. Some of the men are smoking. Others chew quids of betel. A few young children are milling about and I even spot a couple of babies being held. To my left a young women lies on 1 her back reading a Burmese romance novel. Another, somewhat older woman, speaking by phone to a migrant friend elsewhere, laughs as she explains her predicament. Someone else brings out a box of biscuits and passes them around to share. The migrants waiting here smile and greet us, thanking us for coming. There are, perhaps, about 50 migrants here—mostly women—crowding out small patches of open ground between the banana trees. Although KBC had, I was told, employed upwards of 300 workers only a few years prior, the workforce had seriously declined when large groups quit in a series of disputes over unpaid wages, while others left following the recent closure of the factory’s weaving department. Hence, the 50 or so migrants hiding here are all that are left, among whom are a handful I know from my previous visits to the factory. In response to our enquiries about their situation, the migrants here tell us that they fled into the sugarcane field this morning while it was still dark, taking with them supplies of rice, boiled eggs, pickled tea, and packaged snacks they had prepared the night before. Initially, they say, the KBC factory owner—himself based in Bangkok— gave instructions that the workers were not to stop production, despite news of impending raids. At the last minute, however, the personnel manager got cold feet and told the workers they should temporarily hide out in the nearby sugarcane fields, since neither he nor the owner could guarantee their security. The migrants we are speaking with ask us, in turn, what we know of the raids elsewhere, and they name a factory nearby where they have heard the police who came up yesterday from Bangkok have already arrested the workers. 2 Figure 1. Myanmar migrants hide among sugarcane plants and banana trees to avoid a police raid in December 2012. (photo: Stephen Campbell) Today is 15 December 2012, one day after the deadline for undocumented migrants in Thailand to register for passports and work permits, thereby escaping their status of illegality. Like the vast majority of Mae Sot’s 200,000 plus Myanmar migrants, those hiding here amidst the sugarcane lack documentation for legal residence and work in Thailand. And like most everyone in Mae Sot’s migrant community, they knew the registration deadline was approaching; billboards had been put up, and loudspeaker-toting pick-up trucks had toured the town, announcing in Thai and Burmese that those not registered by 14 December would face up to 5 years in prison, with fines up to 50,000 3 baht (just over US $1,600). Government officials in Bangkok had further announced that over one million undocumented migrants would be deported (Voice of America 2012, 14 December). At other factories in Mae Sot, workers had fled across the nearby border to Buddhist monasteries in the Myanmar town of Myawaddy to wait until the Bangkok police departed. Everyone seemed to know it would only last a few days; this was not the first registration deadline to pass, nor was it the first time raids had been conducted in Mae Sot. Although most Mae Sot-based migrants knew in advance of the registration deadline, only a small minority had actually applied for passports and work permits. For the majority, the cost of obtaining these documents through any of the area’s many passport companies was prohibitive—more than they could save in a year.

Load more