Thailand's Hidden Workforce: Burmese Migrant Women Factory Workers
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Thailand's Hidden Workforce: Burmese Migrant Women Factory Workers
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Overview
Un-documented and unregulated, this army of migrant workers constitutes the ultimate 'disposable' labour force, enduring gruelling working conditions and much aggression from the Thai police and immigration authorities. This insightful book ventures into a part of the global economy rarely witnessed by Western observers.
Based on unique empirical research, it provides the reader with a gendered account of the role of women migrant workers in Thailand's factories and interrogates the ways in which they manage their families and their futures.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781848139879 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 06/14/2012 |
| Series: | Asian Arguments |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 216 |
| File size: | 427 KB |
About the Author
Kyoko Kusakabe is Associate Professor of Gender and Development Studies in the School of Environment, Resources and Development at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand.
Read an Excerpt
Thailand's Hidden Workforce
Burmese Migrant Women Factory Workers
By Ruth Pearson, Kyoko Kusakabe
Zed Books Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Ruth Pearson and Kyoko KusakabeAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84813-987-9
CHAPTER 1
Thailand's hidden workforce: Burmese women factory workers
Burmese migrant workers in Thailand: hidden from the global gaze
This book tells the story of women who migrate from Burma to work, as part of a large and exploited workforce, in Thailand's export factories. It deals with a part of the current globalisation story which is rarely glimpsed either from the West or indeed within Thailand and other parts of Asia. Most of the migrant factory workers in Thailand, like factory workers in garment and textile industries all over the world, are young women, though there are also a number of older women and men among their number. Their experiences of exploitation echo those of many women workers in export factories all over the world. But what is particularly poignant about the story of the Burmese workers in Thailand is that they are not only migrants, seeking better lives for themselves and their families, away from the dire situation they face in their native country; very often they are illegal or 'unregistered' migrants, with no legal right to remain in the country of destination, or even in their jobs. They have no recourse to legal protection from any kind of oppression or abuse, be it low wages, excessive overtime, harsh factory regimes, illegal deductions from their wages, restrictions on their mobility, or harassment by police, immigration authorities and local citizens. Although courted by Thai industrialists seeking to access cheap labour in order to make their products competitive in global markets often characterised as 'a race to the bottom', Burmese migrants are frequently reviled by Thai people, who view them as a threat to social stability and job opportunities for themselves, a perception frequently fuelled by politicians seeking to distance themselves from the reality of domestic civil unrest and economic problems within Thailand.
There are an estimated 2 million migrant workers in Thailand, most of whom work in the unregulated construction and agricultural sectors, moving between workplaces and employers as demand for their labour shifts, living in miserable conditions without regulation or protection. This represents a significant number given that the total recorded labour force in Thailand is some 11 million, though there is very little acknowledgement, either within Thailand or outside, of the significant role played by migrant labour in the Thai economy. This contrasts strongly with the widely discussed presence of approximately 150,000 Burmese refugees who have sought shelter in a series of camps for displaced people on the Western borders with Burma, which have received widespread publicity both in Thailand and throughout the Western world, particularly in North America, which is home to a relatively large Burmese diaspora.
The context: push-and-pull factors underlying Burmese migration to Thailand
The Burmese women and men who cross Thailand's border in search of employment conform in many ways to a classic model of push — pull migration. Certainly the economic and political conditions in their homeland provide a clear rationale for those who want to leave. Three decades of economic decline and political repression in Burma under increasingly oppressive military regimes have decimated the country's once substantial physical infrastructure and thriving economic sectors, which once supplied rubber to many parts of the world. The ousting of Aung San Suu Kyi after her victory in the 1990 democratic general election heralded the rule of a series of autocratic and idiosyncratic military generals, often seemingly ruled by astrology rather than logic, who have denied the population the opportunity for political participation or economic advancement. These governments have sought to impose the dominance of the ruling Burman ethnic groups against other ethnic groups, including the Karen, Karenni, Shan and Mon, who have at various times conducted armed insurrection against the government. This has not only resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, but has also led to the development of a forced labour regime in which the government requisitions labour for the armed forces or construction projects, as well as food and other goods from minority populations. Repression is particularly strong in the border provinces, causing real hardship and insecurity as well as various types of human rights abuse.
Even those from the central Burman heartlands have faced increasing economic insecurity as well as political oppression, and the migrant workers in Thailand come from all ethnic groups in the population. Most of the migrant workers we talked to recount tales of families falling into debt, with no possibility of jobs or incomes in the crumbling economy, claiming they are motivated to seek work in Thailand as much to support their families back home as to seek a better life for themselves. The push factors have been exacerbated in recent years by escalating repression and unrest. The so-called 'saffron revolution' in 2007 led by Buddhist monks on the streets of Yangon (Rangoon), which was followed by severe repression of the students and ordinary citizens who gave their support to these protests. Those who came from the Irrawaddy Delta were further destabilised by Cyclone Nargis, which hit in 2008, with people in rural communities losing their homes as well as their land and livelihoods, leading to further pressure on people to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Indeed, working in Thailand does seem to offer a solution, particularly to their economic problems. The difference in wages between Thailand and Burma is large; official estimates say that wages in Thailand are up to ten times higher than in Burma, which makes it very clear why young Burmese women and men are attracted to working in factories and in other parts of the Thai economy, in spite of difficult conditions and low wages in comparison to the pay of Thai workers. Many migrant workers we spoke to told us with pride that, although their wages were low, they were able to save money and send regular remittances to their families, whereas if they had stayed at home they would not have been able to help in this way. They also complained that in Burma the cost of education, transport and health was growing continuously, and wages at home, if they had jobs, would not cover all the family's expenses.
The growth of migrant workers in manufacturing and export factories in Burma dates from the 1990s, when Thai exports were increasingly challenged by competition from lower-waged economies in the region such as Vietnam and China. In order to take advantage of cheaper labour both in lower-wage parts of Thailand and in the form of migrants from neighbouring countries, the Thai government instituted a policy of industrial decentralisation, with the overt objective of closing the development gap between itself and its poorer neighbours. Whilst this objective has never been achieved, there has since the mid-1990s been a significant growth in factories employing migrant labour, and especially after the Asian financial crisis in 1997–98, which forced the pace of economic recovery measures. The majority of the factories (re)locating to border areas were set up in the western town of Mae Sot in Tak province. By 2004 there were nearly 125,000 registered Burmese workers in Tak province, though this is widely considered to represent less than a third of the total number of migrants, including those not official registered, making it the largest concentration of registered Burmese migrants outside Bangkok. The high proportion of women among these migrants — nearly 70 per cent — reflects the high concentration of employment in Tak province in garment and textile factories, which traditionally employ a high percentage of women in their workforce. Mae Sot grew from a small and isolated border trading outpost with 50,000 inhabitants in 1988, most notable for its (contraband) trade with neighbouring Burma in precious gemstones and teak, to a bustling urban centre ten years later with a resident population of traders — mainly Burmese Muslims and Chinese — supplemented by Buddhist Burman and Christian Karen workers from different parts of Burma. The population had grown fivefold by 2010.
Not all factories relocated to the border towns; still the largest concentration of Burmese and other migrant workers in Thailand are to be found in the small workshops and factories in central Thailand, both in the capital Bangkok and in other towns in the adjacent provinces of Pathumthani and Samut Prakan. More recently there has been a growth in the establishment of factories employing Burmese migrants in the town known as 'Three Pagodas Pass', a border crossing point in the Sangklaburi district of Kanchanaburi province; since 1996 a number have been producing garments, furniture and even mosquito nets, aimed at both domestic and export markets. In this part of Thailand, unlike in the central areas and Mae Sot, the organisation of migrant workers is fairly informal due to the fact that this area is relatively isolated both from Yangon and from Bangkok, with poor road infrastructure on both sides of the border. Most of the Burmese workers employed in Three Pagodas Pass walk daily through the informal crossings that straddle the town, returning to their homes on the Burmese side when their shifts have ended; the exception is those — not infrequent — occasions when they are forced by the demands of the job to work all night, which requires them to sleep in the very place where they work all day.
The other concentration of Burmese workers, in the central provinces around Bangkok, are those who have been hit the hardest by economic downturn, first in the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, and more recently in the deteriorating conditions of 2008–09, following the financial crisis in the West. The export factories only started to hire Burmese workers after the 1997–08 crisis as an alternative strategy to decentralisation, in order to reduce costs and improve their competitiveness. Many of the factories in these areas are relatively large, though they tend to coexist with informal workshops and home-based subcontracting. The larger factories generally employ only registered migrants who have the appropriate documents, often people who have been in the country for some time. Undocumented migrants can be found in the more informal workshops, where the pay and the working conditions are inferior.
Mae Sot and Three Pagodas Pass feel like migrant towns, delinked from mainstream Thai society, whereas the high numbers of (mainly) Burmese migrants in the town of Samut Prakan in central Thailand fail to make a significant impact on this large Thai city, except maybe in certain marginal neighbourhoods where migrant workers and their families are concentrated. Unlike in Mae Sot and Three Pagodas Pass, where migrants wear traditional Burmese dress (women in salong and men in longi), Burmese people in Samut Prakan tend to make more effort — and have more opportunities — to assimilate into Thai society. When they go out — even to the weekend language schools, which teach both Thai and English — migrant workers, in white shirts and black skirts, resemble Thai university students. Their clothing, like their tendency to display photographs of the Thai royal family, is a deliberate attempt to demonstrate 'respect' to the local Thai population. However, in Mae Sot, where only 5 per cent of the registered workforce in the garment factories are Thai, there is very little pressure to imitate the dress or other lifestyle preferences of Thai people
Background to the research
This book is based on research carried out by the authors, together with a team of Thai and Burmese researchers, between 2006 and 2010. The studies, focused on the three areas described above, involved interviews, surveys and participatory workshops with large numbers of Burmese workers and organisations, as well as Thai officials, policymakers and other key informants, including academics and international bodies. In the course of this investigation we uncovered a great deal of information about the ways in which this hidden workforce, mainly young women, is contributing to the economic development of Thailand, as well as working to support themselves and their families. We came to understand the complexities of the changing migrant registration system in Thailand, and the ways in which it serves both to discipline and to control the workers, and to provide a cover for a much larger number of unregistered — and more vulnerable — migrants. We became aware of the ways in which many Burmese migrant women live their lives without the recognition or protection provided by citizenship in either their state of origin, Burma, or their state of destination, Thailand, which is not the case for many migrant workers in other parts of the world, nor indeed for Thai migrant workers in other parts of Asia and elsewhere.
As noted above, the majority of this migrant workforce employed in Thailand's factories are women, mainly young women of prime reproductive age. One of the most striking findings of this study was the problems that arise when these young women have children. In the hostile environment in which they find themselves, they have to make complicated and difficult arrangements to access the maternity care they need for their pregnancy and childbirth, as well as securing the means for the upkeep and care of their children. Whilst the literature has reflected extensive concern regarding the so-called global care chain — involving women from low-income developing countries migrating to developed countries to carry out care work in households, childcare centres, hospitals and care homes — there has been much less interest in the situation of other types of migrant workers and how they arrange their own care responsibilities, as they continue to carry out their jobs and provide economic support for their families.
The following sections of this introductory chapter provide an overview of the literature on and debates about migrant women in export factories. The chapters that follow report on the results of our research, providing detail of the context in which the growth of migrant women workers in Thailand has occurred. Our account focuses particularly on the journeys of the women themselves, the struggles they have undertaken to balance the different demands on them, the ways in which they have responded to their new circumstances, and the hopes and fears they have for the future and that of their families and children.
Burmese women workers in Thailand: nimble fingers and docile bodies
The Burmese migrant workers in Thailand featured in this book are part of a worldwide army of female workers who have laboured long and hard producing manufactured goods: both low-tech traditional products of the so-called 'sunset' industries, such as textiles, garments and shoes, and the new-wave products of the high-tech 'sunrise' industries, including home communications and media items (televisions, DVD players), computers, mobile phones, as well as the new generation of must-have consumer goods such as e-readers, iPads and the like. Since the 1970s, a combination of improved air and maritime transportation, telecommunications, rising costs and improved labour rights in the developed countries, as well as competition from the then emerging economies of the East — Japan and South Korea — encouraged corporations to seek lower wage platforms for the assembly and production of goods destined for Western consumer markets. Initially this was focused on the labour-intensive parts of a specific process — for example, the assembly of integrated circuits for the burgeoning electronics industries, the making up of garments from pre-cut cloth. In the first decade of this new international division of labour, such production was limited to the so-called 'Asian Tigers' — Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. But as the years went on more and more countries — the so-called newly industrialised countries (NICs), which included Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand — were participating in this growing market for manufactured exports. In the 1990s they were joined by even lower-waged economies: for example, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam in Asia; El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in Central America; and Morocco, Egypt, Mauritius and Mauritania in North and sub-Saharan Africa. Production in some of the early global industrialisers became more integrated, more capital-intensive — and less female-intensive — whilst those at the lowest end of the supply chain, mainly working in low-tech garment and other assembly industries, competed increasingly on the basis of cheap labour. And when China entered the global market in a major way in the second half of the 1990s, its ability to offer economies of scale and very low costs, and its conducting business in international currency, challenged the market shares of other countries, particularly in Central America and South and Southeast Asia.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Thailand's Hidden Workforce by Ruth Pearson, Kyoko Kusakabe. Copyright © 2012 Ruth Pearson and Kyoko Kusakabe. Excerpted by permission of Zed Books Ltd.
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Table of Contents
1. Thailand's Hidden Workforce: Burmese Women Factory Workers2. Thailand's Industrialisation and Labour Migration Policies
3. Burmese Women Migrant Workers in Thailand's Export Industries
4. Migrant Women in Thailand's Factories: Working Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
5. Burmese Migrant Women and Families in Thailand: Reproduction, Children and Care
6. After the Crisis: New Struggles and Possibilities
7. Burmese Migrant Workers Between Two Worlds
Appendices
Notes
References